Day 44-47 - Belfast

Wednesday 1 September, 14:00 BST

I'm now in Belfast, my birthplace and the place where I spent my first 6 years of life, at the home of my uncle Jim, aunt Jean and cousin Jonathan in nearby Bangor. It looks like I'm going to be well-fed and well-travelled by the end of my time here.

Quick introduction for those unfamiliar with Northern Ireland - Belfast is a city of about 300,000 and is surprisingly small in size - the suburbs only go about 4-6km in any direction - but it is surrounded by a range of small and medium sized towns. It's got a lot of history going back into the triple digits AD, but most of it was built around the time when the Protestant faith was big on erecting giant monuments to their faith in the form of beautiful old (and often quite grandiose) churches you see everywhere, as well as castles, forts and other buildings.

Its modern-day people came from intermarriage between the local Irish people and Scottish and northern English people who migrated centuries ago. In 1690, William of Orange conquered the whole of Ireland for the British, and in 1949, after much fighting there (especially around 1916 or so), what is now known as the Republic of Ireland emerged. Ulster, or Northern Ireland, stayed as part of Britain.

Unfortunately in the 20th century, and particularly since 1968 when the Troubles began, Belfast's become most well-known for sectarian violence and the division between its dominant Protestant and minority Catholic populations (which has more to do with land and history than with religion, as with most world conflicts). Even now that there has been serious talks of peace and the widescale bombing ceased years ago, the tension is still there and there are certain areas in the western suburbs (particularly Falls and Shankill) that you just wouldn't go to, unless you're a camera-laden Chinese tourist looking for "the place of the fight". (Such macabre tours are in fact run by less ethical tour operators)

Around Belfast and even in some of the estates in places like Bangor, there are big murals depicting various historical events (eg 1 July 1916) or making statements like "Free the POWs" and so on. Most of them are pretty tame and are quite incomprehensible to those like me who don't know a great deal about what happened when.

Belfast's near neighbours are Carrickfergus and Newtownabbey to the north, Holywood, Bangor and Newtownards to the east and Lisburn and Dunmurry to the south-west. Each has their own distinct identity despite each being less than 15km from Belfast and connected to it by dual carriageways. Newtownards nowadays has a historic city centre and modern shopping centres and sprawling suburbs - the one I lived in as a child has a big historic abbey next to it. Bangor is Belfast's seaside, basically - it's where people come to get away from the big smoke and it's even got a fun park (Pickie Park) right at the water's edge.

My early observations of Belfast

Given that, due to my age when I left, I am more of a tourist here than a local returning home, a lot of this is as new to me as it would be to any visitor.

1. People here are very friendly by and large.

2. Things look very familiar once you're out of Belfast. Apart from using upside down give-way signs as junction/warning signs instead of the yellow diamond, the roads remind me a little of suburban Adelaide. Each suburb or estate has its own architectural look and almost every house in it looks the same. Each major journey (eg Belfast-Bangor, Bangor-Newtownards etc) has two ways to get there - one using the dual carriageway with suburbs at either side, and the other using windy country roads going through farms and hills. It's funny seeing cows on one side and the chimneys of Belfast on the other.

3. Traffic is chaotic - I'm amazed there are not more accidents. Cars are smaller here so the lanes are smaller too - but due to most homes having negligible space between the front of the house and the road, people actually park in the road, often in the only lane available for driving, so people routinely go to the wrong side of the road to overtake. Pedestrian lights are available but usually ignored as pedestrians basically go when they can.

4. I mentioned about the small cars. When I first arrived in Belfast, we passed a fuel station with prices posted at around 83.9. This looked familiar too until I realised that this was in British pence, about 2.5 times the value of the 83.9 Canadian cents it cost in Halifax. This explains the absence of SUVs. A typical CD here is about $43 Aus, a DVD somewhat more. I've strongly encouraged Jonathan to stock up on CDs if he ever comes to Australia.

Saturday 4 September, 09:00 BST

There isn't much to update with as I've pretty much written it all before. My relatives are cool - I've indeed been eating excellent Northern Irish fare (soda bread, potato bread, bacon, Wiener schnitzel... OK, that comes more from the Viennese origins of our family, but yeah :) and Jonathan and I have been exchanging music and he's been a great tour guide.

On Thursday morning we went to Newtownards and walked around for a bit, before going off to Belfast and seeing my mum's family home. It's belonged to someone else for 20 years since my grandad died, but she must get a few visits from our family as she was quite happy to meet me and talk to me. Afterwards we walked around Belfast and took in the interesting buildings street by street. I wonder how this place looked 100 years ago - probably not a great deal different, except they probably didn't have Westfield Centrecourt back then.

On Friday we went to my dad's old house (my grandparents moved out of it even before we moved to Australia), and then came up the long way through Holywood to Bangor, walked around Bangor, before exploring the area to the east.

I've enjoyed my stay in Northern Ireland. It's not "home" to me in the way many young migrants seem to identify with their home country - but it's still a nice place and I'd like to come back one day.