How Long Must We Sing This Song?

(Day 16)
About three minutes into my day tour of Northern Ireland the twenty-something driver, Tom, turned to me and said, "The aircon doesn't work, so I thought we should all nude up and turn the bus into a big happy sauna!" About three minutes and fifteen seconds into my day tour, I started to have second thoughts about riding shotgun. Luckily, he figured out how to open the windows and turned out to be an excellent guide with a real sense of pride in his hometown and strong opinions about how Belfast should develop into the future.

The tour was great - the Antrim Coastline was gorgeous, even if the Giant's Causeway was smaller than I expected (I'm Aussie - if you're going to describe something as big, I expect big like the Twelve Apostles or Uluru or Patnther's World Of Entertainment) Here's me on a deceptively small looking rope bridge, which was actually kind of high up over some water.



The cities were pretty depressing. We drove past what I initially thought were jails but turned out to be fortified police stations; by the time we reached Derry/Londonderry Bogside, the middle-aged British couple was practically too scared to get off the bus. And they definitely didn't want to visit the Free Derry Museum, in a building converted from the houses outside which the Bloody Sunday killings took place. I spent a good two hours in there and while I found it tragic, frustrating and confronting, I was also moved.

As fascinating as Belfast was, I wasn't sad to leave. It may be a city on the rise, but there's a palpable undercurrent of tension throughout the North. I hope that Tom and his generation (our generation, really) can move beyond what's come before and build that future they see.