Notes on Belfast

All you wanted to know on being a Lundy, why does Belfast look like that and what’s going on with COVID in Northern Ireland

To describe Belfast as a city as ease with itself would be an overstatement. 

The economist Tyler Cowan described nearby Derry as being ‘short on sights and long on history’ which equally applies to Belfast. 

Buildings

Everyone becomes an architecture expert when they go travelling - this applies to me also. 

Belfast once looked much like the older parts of Newcastle as the city's boom times coincided in the 18th century when the Victorian look was in style. However, being an industrial centre during WWII drew the attention of German bombers and much of the good-looking buildings were destroyed. Furthermore, as the buildings that replaced them needed to be bomb-proof they tended to be long on concrete and short on ornaments. 

The city centre is almost comically small. It is based around a very Victorian City Hall (closed due to COVID-19) and extends about 250m to the West to the ‘Golden Mile’ (a busy road with several old famous pubs - I think the name is a figment of the tourist board’s imagination) and the same distance to the East which takes you to the River Lagan and the ‘Titanic District’. It is then about 150m south and north and the city centre is about 1sqr Km of a mixture of Victorian, Modernist and one Georgian Building. 

There is quite a lot of construction going up in the city centre that are either hotels or student accommodation. This is to serve the city's conference centre and main university, Queens. The University is huge and relies on international students for its funding (about half of the students there are international). 

My rule of city centres with universities is if your town is not something else in the UK, it will become a University Town. This is certainly the case with Belfast with the large majority of young people in bars being students. This is not good or bad, but it certainly changes the atmosphere of the place in a way that is less ‘authentic’. It also means that bars I’ve seen described as ‘homely’ and ‘atmospheric’ on Trip Advisor are better described as loud and cheap, as this is what appeals to the median student. Generally, restaurants that were also bars were much better than bars which also served food. The Guinness served in Northern Ireland is significantly better than in England, that this is surprising to me shows my lack of knowledge of these isles. More on this later.

There are several interesting alleyways (called ‘Entries’) which I am told were once the centre of commerce in the 19th century but in the 20th century were places where one would go to be stabbed rather than to spend a farthing. I am not sure what there is for the person in the 21st century as the allies have been restored, but not particularly well.

Also too many cars and too much parking. Driving into Belfast is very easy and there are lots of car parks near the city centre. The ease of driving means there is no area that is without cars and so wandering around is quite difficult. The car parks are probably due to property prices being low in the past, but it does plant the idea in your mind that the proclaimed ‘rebirth’ of Belfast is still a work in progress. E.g. if a car park brings in more money than a housing development then maybe investment isn’t as good as everyone claims it is. 

I stayed in a great hostel in a Victorian building that was almost identical to the house I lived in Newcastle. Narrow and tall, with steep creaky stairs, and electric showers. Fantastic memories.

There were some fantastically horrible modernist buildings that really makes you think that modern architecture is some kind of conspiracy against normal people. Take for example, Belfast City Hospital that I can only describe as an incongruent combination of the colour yellow and concrete. It unites to create a building that really does look like a spaceship ready to fly to Mars in the 1970’s.

There was a fine example of the architecture style I like to call chick-bleak that would make a good album cover for Kanye West’s new albulm.

COVID-19: International Edition

This is the first trip I’ve taken since February 2020 and so it’s a pleasure to report on the irrationalities of COVID in the context of international travel and the devolved administrations of Northern Ireland. 

Firstly, the plane was late as it was being ‘systematically cleaned’ and this took longer than usual. Fair enough, I mean at this point it’s fairly common knowledge that COVID is spread through person-to-person contact, rather than by particles left on chairs or whatever, but it’s cleanliness-theatre that BA deem necessary, whatever. Second, and more funnily, during the 1hr 15 flight BA gave everyone a packet of crisps to eat. So around 100 people in a confined space removed masks and ate crisps for five minutes! Brilliant case of snatching defeat from the jaws of victory.

Second, In Northern Ireland, things are much the same as in England, except for properties managed by the Tourist Board are STILL closed due to COVID-19. This includes Belfast Castle, Belfast City Hall and best of all Cerrick-A-Rade rope bridge. The latter of which is literally a rope bridge between two rocks and is in a fairly remote part of County Antrim. Really quite amazing that 250 years ago fisherman can build a 30 metre bridge out of rope but in 2021 people cannot get themselves organised enough to allow people to walk across it. 

Many of the same service-sector absurdities present in England exist in Northern Ireland. For example, live music is banned in Belfast and so no official performances can take place, However, people can bring their own instruments and play at pubs. Therefore, one needs to look at each pub where they advertise that there might be music tonight. The city council apparently does not care enough to stop this, but it does care enough to make the city’s culture worm its way around silly rules. 

Mask wearing is mandatory indoors and this universally observed by the staff in cafes and such, but not the clients. This is admirable on the staffs’ part, but I always feel sorry for them as walking around and breathing hard in a mask is not pleasant and the jobs are not well-paid. Tipping in the 2021 should be re-framed as something like a ‘Mask payment’ as I assume bosses don’t give the staff more money for having to wear a mask. As the benefit is enjoyed by the customer, it’s only fair to add on 5% or whatever to a bill as a form of gratitude.

Football, Infrastructure and Police

On the Tuesday evening I arrived there was a group of Linfield FC fans marching through the city to a game. I’d heard a lot about the Northern Irish predeliction to march and so followed them for a good while, doing my best not to look like an undercover policeman. They had a very interesting flag which was the clubs logo super-imposed on a tricolour of red, white and blue. Interestingly they didn’t have a British flag as Linfield is regarded as a Unionist club, I wonder if this was because they were not seeking to offend nationalists in Belfast? This theory is slightly undermined by a number of the group pausing at the Celtic FC Club shop to graffiti ‘fuck off’ on the metal store front. 

Like any modern city, there are many many incantations encouraging people to recycle on bus shelters, bus advertisements and on street posters. Most hilariously, the city has adopted a Tiawenise-style recycling system where bins are divided into multiple castegories to allow the city to sort trash more easily. Exactly what these categories are is a mystery as the signage has been eroded by time and not replaced. This remains of what Alex Taberook talked about in India where the government, unable to deliver basic services, focuses its attention on fashionable causes like introducing fines for throwing away chewing gum or leaving ones car idling. I don’t know about the state of Northern Irelands basic services but I didn’t see many policemen on the beat and there is certainly an acute drug addiction problem.

Also the city’s buses are very numerous and efficient but are all coloured a hideous pink colour. Why is this? I have never seen a car painted pink and so people would never chose there own car to be painted that colour. So it’s a bit of a paradox that the collective will of the city would unite upon vivid pink as the appropriate colour for a bus. It’s a good colour for not being run over I suppose, as these buses fly out of every corner in the already-mentioned unpedastriened city centre. 

The city is framed by some very pleasant hills and during sunset they contrast well with the shockingly bad architecture of the ‘Golden Mile’.

Food

I am an unreformed student when it comes to eating out on my own so have a strong bias for the affordable when eating in the city. As such, I had Irish stew and a Guinness at two Irish restaurants (Darcy’s Place and The Crown Liqour Bar). This is essentially lamb cooked in a stock with root vegetables, and accompanied with soda bread and butter. It’s good though, not as cheap as the ingredients on account of being the one Irish dish which must tourists can name. 

The Crown Liquour Bar is managed by the National Trust and boy is this not a good thing. The place was fully booked the evening I went and me and the person accompanying me had a table for six. To be fair, around half of the pub’s seating is within booths, that given COVID sensitivities might be a bit awkward to share. However, some innovation with spacing, perspex glass and so on, would clearly go a long way to increasing the capacity. Because whilst sitting near people is annoying nowadays, so is not getting a seat at a famous pub. Irish Stew was quite poor also, but the building had great decor. I say ‘but’ but I think the great decor is often inversely correlated with good food in touristic parts of town. 

Also due to the lack of people the atmosphere was very quiet - standing at the bar also seems to be banned and table service alcohol really lacks the positive externalities that drinking at the bar does.

Darcy’s Place was excellent on both Guinness and Irish Stew. Recommended. 

Guinness Report: It’s well known that Guinness is a highly overrated drink, but it is true what-they-say about it - it really is better in Ireland. It is indeed creamy and I’d say it even had a latte-like quality that I’d never experienced in an alcoholic beverage. Recommended. 

Conclusion

It’s a cliche that Belfast is both ‘growing fast’ economically and ‘tightly wound’ historically. For me, these two things clash most in the University Quarter, as most of the international students are unaware and uninterested in the violence of the past and those who were around at the time don’t want to talk about it anymore. This is in contrast to Derry where there is no University and people will bend your ear off to talk about the troubles, the siege of the 15th century and whether someone is a ‘Lundy’*.

 As such the university sector feels somewhat disconnected from the rest of the city. In a brochure the city optimistically sells Belfast as being ‘An Hour From London’ which I can tell you is very much in the fake section of the fake news stand.

The University itself is an excellent and decadent recreation of an Oxford University-like facade, but it’s so unlike the rest of the city it’s more a simulation of what the city might have looked like before the bombs of WWII and the 1970’s.

It sort of reminds me of my time at McGill University which is an almost totally English-speaking University in the centre of a city where speaking French is a massively important issue. To have an institution sitting in the centre of a city that so clearly wants to escape from the orbit of a political issue that defines the city in which it exists, is to me a bit off. 

At the same time, many people are thrilled with recent developments in the Peace Process and there are now many hotels and hostels. Most of the tourists I met were passing through on tours of the whole of Ireland, which I imagine is fairly new development as most would stick to the Dublin-Galway-Cork triangle. I found people less chatty in Belfast than in Derry, but perhaps this is a City versus Town mentality.

At the same time, the idea that all football shirts are banned in some clubs is perceived as being baffling and absurd by the non-local residents. It shows a lack of self-confidence in Belfast’s present culture that to me was disappointing to see. Obviously not enraging people > the freedom to wear a footie tee, but the fact that this mental equation is necessary was sad to me.

Things I missed

I didn’t get to see the Titanic Museum before writing this, but will see it before I go. I also won’t get to go on one of the political tours where you go on a walking tour with a Republican and a Unionist as they show you their neighbourhoods and the stories. I didn’t do this as the times didn’t line up for me and there was something a tincey bit absurd about the whole idea if I’m honest. Saying that I would of done it anyway if I’d had the time.

I am presently on a train from Londonderry to Portrush, via Coleraine, in order to see the Giants Causeway. I will write a similar thing for Londonderry. The land where people cannot agree on the name of the city or the country in which the city is located. To Nationalist-Republicans it’s Derry located in Ireland and to Unionist-Loyalists it’s Londonderry located in Northern Ireland. Stay tuned folks!

Thanks all!

*A Lundy is a supporter of the Military Governor of Derry, Robert Lundy. He was the Military leader of the city and is regarded as being crap as he offered to surrender to the French army which surrounded the city. The City would sack him and go on to outlast the French. In modern day parlance being a Lundy sort of means giving up on whatever political matter is deemed important that day.