Derry

Thursday, November 5 a group of Americans studying in Dublin boarded a couple of buses headed for Northern Ireland. I had been about forty minutes early, not wanting to get stuck in rush hour I headed out earlier than needed. I ended up taking a free Metro paper from a bag on the sidewalk and I put my suitcase against a wall along the sidewalk facing the buses to use as a seat. My friends started arriving about fifteen minutes later and we enjoyed a long bus ride with a break for lunch before heading to the Carrick-A-Rede Rope Bridge in Atrim. It was great fun walking to and across the bridge itself and the landscape was absolutely beautiful. Afterwards we headed for Giants Causeway where we watched a fifteen minute video on the origin of it. We pretty much made a mad dash to make it to the Causeway before sunset. It was absolutely beautiful and we had fun climbing around on it. Quite a few people got too close to the ocean though and the waves completely hit them. Once back on the bus we made our way to Derry where we had dinner and then were to stay for the night. I went out with a few friends to find a pub and we ended up in a nice little place for a drink.

Friday we woke up for breakfast followed by a walking tour of Derry which had us all completely soaked by the rain. One of the war memorials had a few Johnston's listed on it, which I was really excited about as my Irish roots lay in that name. My great grandma on my mum's side was a Johnston. We learned quite a bit of history on the tour and we got to see a lot of the murals that have been painted in memorial for those who died during The Troubles and on Bloody Sunday. We also walked past the wall that divides the Protestant part of town from the Catholic part. Just a note here for those of you who think the issues in Northern Ireland are about religion they aren't so much as they are politics and civil rights. It has nothing to do with what the Protestants believe versus the Catholics it's about social class and earning the same rights to land and life. The whole experience was rather heart wrenching and I was in a right state all day extremely close to tears. Our tour ended with a trip to the Bloody Sunday Museum. One of the men who works there has dedicated his life to the museum and educating people on the events of that day because his brother was one of the victims. The museum itself has many relics from that day including items from survivors and the victims. They even had a couple of computers set up with video footage taken that day which I sat and watched a bit of and tried not to fall apart. The whole group of us then went to watch a video on the events and victims. My interest heightened and I went completely cold when one of the victims was named as John Johnston who had not been a part of the civil rights march on that day but had been trying to avoid it while walking to a friend's house. I don't know if I would perhaps be related to the man but it's something I would really like to look into.

I was able to recoup a bit over lunch with some of the girls before our bus trip to Belfast which also gave me some time to just think and eventually take a small nap. The trip in and of itself up to that point had definitely been more of an emotional one than the trip to Galway which had been more about the beauty of the landscape whereas Derry was more about the people living there and what they had been through.

A note on the pictures: The first one was taken by the rope bridge, left to right, Casey, Me, Abby, and Teri. The second one is Giants Causeway. The banner is actually the same one depicted in the mural under the soldier's boot, and the stains on it are one of the victim's blood.