16 September 2008: Belfast, Ireland

I had to wake up this morning at 7:00 because Arnie, the owner of the hostel, was working and he would be pissed if he found me sleeping on the couch. Not so much at me, because what could he do other than make me leave, but at Marissa. And I didn't want her to get in trouble.

Unfortunately, the previous night had been without question the best sleep I had gotten so far in Europe. I had fallen asleep within minutes of lying down, and when my alarm went off and I re-set it for 7:30 I was asleep again within seconds. Literally seconds. When it went off a half hour later I was a grumpy dude. I could have slept until 2:00. Easily.

There wasn't anything open at this hour, so I decided to have breakfast/lunch and got some samosas from Tesco for £1 and ate them cold. It was pretty gross. But hey, Indian food!

After breakfast/lunch I went to the Queen's library and went up to the law section. I picked out a challenging-looking book, opened it up on the table, and took a nap old-school style-- mouth open with my head on my arms and my arms on the book. Boy did I look like a weary and studious dude. And there I slept for about an hour.

When I woke up I set off on Sam's walking tour. And, well, now I got it.

Sam directed me mostly through Protestant areas, whereas I had been in the Catholic neighborhood the day before, and it literally could have been a whole nother country, let alone city.

I started down Shankill Road, and the first, obvious difference was the British flags zig-zagging down the entire road, overhead from side to side. To be honest, it was a little unnerving. Sort of like a ghost town, although not for any particular reason. Just the way they were hanging over everything sort of as a remnant of the past. I don't know.

But even more than that, there was just so much pride throughout the neighborhood. Whereas the Catholic side had murals depicting current events, the Shankill murals were all about the Troubles-- either representing their struggle in general or as
memorials to the fallen members of the community, but either way the murals profoundly illustrated the history that's shaped West Belfast.

Besides the murals, though, there were loads of memorials and plaques and statues honoring volunteer soldiers and community members who had died. It was all incredibly moving.

I know that there's a second side to everything, and that in a sense I had seen the second side the day before, but it's really hard to come out of Belfast feeling anything but sympathy for the Protestant side. Part of that is of course the perception of the IRA, but public perception or not the IRA is clearly the villain. Whatever can be said for "independence," and for Northern Ireland attaining it, it's obvious that the Protestants have nothing but pride in the United Kingdom and in being part of it. It's hard to sympathize with the Catholic side when they are the aggressors and the Protestants are, largely, happy if left alone.

Another thing is that, on the Catholic side, there are some memorials, but they are MUCH fewer in number than on the Protestant side, and they don't really recognize an enemy. And when they do it's England. Again, just makes it hard to sympathize with them as far as the Troubles go.

(By the way, this is only my perception from two days in West Belfast and not much more. If I am off-base, that's what it is. Just a perception.)

Another interesting thing about West Belfast is how, even at this point, the divisions are still so obvious. There are "peace lines" everywhere, walls that separate Catholic and Protestant neighborhoods, so named not because they're a result of peace but because, by separating the neighborhoods, there is ideally less interaction and, thus, more peace. Ironically named, in a sense.

Anyway, just to illustrate this point more, there are two gigantic leisure centers in West Belfast. Either of them would be large enough to support all of West Belfast, if not all of Belfast, but there are two. And they are literally 500 yards apart from each other, one in the Catholic neighborhood and one in the Protestant neighborhood. The whole situation is really quite terrible. Or ridiculous.

The final thing I did in West Belfast was walk by the largest remaining part of the original wall separating the Catholic and Protestant sides. People write messages on the wall, usually words of peace or encouragement. I wrote "Go Blue," not only because it's a worth-while thing to say in any situation but because, more importantly, if the University of Michigan can enable men to walk on the moon it can help with peace in West Belfast. Am I wrong here?

I swung by Tesco to pick up two hamburgers for dinner for 92 pence and then took them to the hostel. Marissa wasn't working that night, which meant that Arnie would be around and I wouldn't be able to crash there.

At first glance, this meant that I was back to couch-surfing, but the buses run from Belfast to Dublin every hour 24 hours a day, so I figured I would just stay out until whenever and take an early bus instead.

I snuck into the Ark, which was another hostel in town, and took a shower, and then I went back to my hostel and gave my stuff to Sam, who said he would put it somewhere for the night.

The problem, though, was that I couldn't ask Sam to let me in at 3:00 or whenever I left the bars to get on the bus to Dublin. So I was, essentially, right back in the same dilema.

What I decided was that since I had gotten a shower and could store my stuff and would be able to meet someone at the bar, I would just find a couch later that night and get my stuff from Sam at 8:30 in the morning. Problem solved.

The other problem, though, was that Arnie being at the hostel meant I couldn't hang out there, and nothing is open between the hours of 7:00 and 10:00. At least, nothing that isn't a pub. Not that I would have minded going to a pub at 8:00, but it did seem a touch on the overkill.

I went to the union, where everything goes on in Belfast, and explored. What I found was the Queen's University Gaming Club having their weekly meeting. Meeting? No, gaming session. Whoop de doo, what else would you want for a Tuesday evening?

Figuring, well, why not, I went in. There were three tables of Dungeons and Dragons, one table of Munchkins, and a bunch of video games being played. Not being able to bring myself to sit down with the Dungeons and Dragons, and since the video games would have been, someway somehow, even less social than a card game, I picked the Munchkins.

It also didn't hurt that the only cute girl in the entire room was playing Munchkins. As well as a second girl who was surprisingly attractivish.

For any of you who have never played Munchkins, I can't even begin to explain how it works. Suffice it to say, it involves a lot of charms and items and outbursts of weird noises. I wish I could explain it more, but I only caught the tail-end of it and, well, I wasn't exactly asking questions.

What I did find out without having to ask, though, was that the Gaming Club had been voted "best club" two years running, just narrowly beating out the Law Club this year. Two groups of dudes that have no problem getting dates, I assure you.

One of the dudes, who was clearly the leader and undisputed Gaming King, asked me what games I played, and I told him that I threw a mean slammer back in the day of POGs and that my blue deck in Magic the Gathering struck fear in all my classmates' hearts in fifth grade. I don't think he was amused, and actually think he was offended, but asked if I wanted to play the next game, which was something called Frag. I figured, again, why not, since there were at least the two cute girls. Not to mention nothing else to do in Belfast.

When the game ended I was getting ready to kick some ass in Frag but the girls got up and had to leave. I could not believe it. Impossibly, I had already committed to playing, and I couldn't back out now. That would REALLY have offended these guys and the Gaming King might have killed me.

So I got my mind back in the game and went to work. My character was named Shell Shock, which was good for me although I would have rathered there be a character named Zach Attack. If the creator of Frag is reading this, can we make that happen?

So what I did was roll the dice and then sit back and watch as the Gaming King decided what to do for me. That's it. It was real intense. So I hadn't a thing to do more than roll the dice, and Shell Shock literally died within 45 seconds of the game beginning. I'm not kidding, it's almost like the Frag gods knew that it was my character, not the Gaming King's.

But I came back to life and started kicking ass, and every time I did something good I would shout "pwned!" and the Gaming King would sit there with this self-satisfed grin, not because he had chosen the right move for Shell Shock but because it was like he knew I'd end up being a hard-core gamer. And boy was I.

And that was my Tuesday evening. I'm telling you, the only difference between American nerds and Irish nerds is that when the Irish nerds have nasally voices and use big words and put pauses between their words they do it with Irish accents. That's the only difference.

At one particularly important part of the game, one of the dudes said "I physically cannot pay 8 gold at this moment" in absolute and complete seriousness. Like that was something he would actually say. And the Gaming King? He responded to that comment with "If you had artificial intelligence it wouldn't multiply your intelligence because you have none to begin with." I couldn't get enough of these guys. It was literally like sitting around with the nerds in South Park if only they were Irish.

Now, I had said I'd meet a couple Swedish girls from the hostel at 10:00, but I was in a position to win the game at 9:55 and, well, I couldn't pass up the opportunity to beat the Gaming King-- who, I forgot to mention, actually had his own card in Munchkins with his likeness on it; I'm not making this up. Unfortunately, in the end this other dude's health withstood my speed and accuracy, and he was victorious.

So this other dude won and cheered for himself, and the Gaming King was not pleased. He gave the other dude this absolute don't-fuck-with-me look and said "How many games did YOU win last night?" The dude very quietly said "One," and the Gaming King retorted "And me? Three. That's what I thought." Damn. You don't mess.

So finally I left to meet Julia, who was a cutie-minus, and Tua, who was average-plus. We went to the pub, and as we were walking it occured to me-- although I don't know how it didn't occur to me before-- that if I just stayed with the girls until they went back to the hostel for the night I could go with them and either take a nap for a few hours before Arnie got up or just leave for Dublin right away. That solved everything.

Unfortunately, these girls were alternately dumb and annoying as hell. As we walked to the bar, on the sidewalk, I said something like "So what are you guys studying here?" and Tua pointed to the campus and responded "No, we're studying THERE." I swear to you, she was being serious. Then she said "The US is always starting wars," and I said in my most obviously sarcastic voice "What are you talking about? I can't think of any wars the US has started." She got this bitch voice like I had the audacity to defend America and she said "Um, are you KIDDING me?" Um, yes.

Anyway, we got to the bar, but absolutely nothing was happening and my last night in Belfast was flat-lining quickly. But I had to stay with the girls in order to get my stuff, and so I couldn't leave. I was shit out of luck.

After the bar closed the girls wanted to go to an after-party at this dude's place, and again I had no choice but to go with them. And wouldn't you know, the "after-party" was sitting around and listening to music. A real hootenanny, high-school style.

As if that weren't an underwhelming enough way to finish the night, Julia was beginning to annoy me. Well, she had been annoying most of the night, but now it was getting unbearable. She was bitching and moaning the entire time about how "You can't buy alcohol here after 11:00 and the bars close at 1:00! We have alcohol until 6:00!" and "Our after-parties always have so much alcohol!" and just annoying the hell out of me. I tried to tell her, calmly, "Well, you're in Ireland now, so I guess you better get used to it," and she said "Tua and I will just make people have better parties." This girl was driving me nuts, but I couldn't go anywhere. I was a prisoner because of my bags.

So I closed my eyes for a bit.

And I woke up at 4:30 with one of the dudes asking me where my friends had went. I couldn't believe it. They had gone back to the hostel and left me there. So I went to sleep in one of the spare beds.


Two things about this night, other than simply how annoying the girls were and how there were probably a thousand better ways to go about my last night in Belfast.

1) If the roles were switched, the guy would never in a thousand, million years leave a sleeping girl at a stranger's house. Not that I was in the least concerned or worried, but still.

2) At the bar I had said to Julia something about how I conceivably could die on this trip, all things considered in how I do stuff when I travel, and she said "Americans ALWAYS think they're going to die in Europe! They all think that! Nothing will happen to you!" I just think it's a touch ironic that, after this statement, she left me in a stranger's house. That's all.