Thanks, I hate it

I could write about the murals for a while. Some of what I might write could even be worth reading. That said, right now the thought of discussing the Belfast murals is quite exhausting. So I’ll write about something else; Why my ‘take’ on ‘things’ is completely useless.

 

When I arrived in Belfast I noticed only a handful of things, almost all cosmetic. I noticed that there is a surprisingly high amount of plant matter in the city, I noticed that there were a lot of fences, and all had spikes, and I noticed that it wasn’t very large. So why are these observations completely useless? I don’t have anything to compare it to. Sure, I have traveled a bit, but most of that was years ago, and almost all to specifically ‘touristy’ areas. The thing about places that are geared towards attracting tourists is that they lie. Those areas are uniquely structured to give a simple and usually upbeat version of history, culture, and society. You might wonder whether I could compare it to what I see in my every day life, and to that I say “lel”. (its like “lol” but … with an ‘e’ rather than an ‘o’) I live in the country and spend almost all of my time at home indoors, when I go to university I take a bus on which I always fall asleep. (Its alright though, the same five or six civil servants ride it with me every day and it just goes from point A to point B) Upon reaching university I make a beeline for the library basement where I work alone processing new books or withdrawing old ones. This is all to say that I, have absolutely, positively, undeniably, nothing even slightly comparable to Belfast in my everyday life, and slightly less of a chance to talk to someone to find out what I am missing.

That said, I found myself rather at ease in Belfast. That said… I was on campus, always in a group, and only ever out during the day, so…eh? Now, a cliche that I’ve noticed that every travel blogger ever does is say something to the effect of “the people are soooooo friendly”. It is like people everywhere (and I mean EVERYWHERE) complaining about how their weather is soooooo whacky and special, and totally unlike your weather. “Oh, here look at these clouds! They don’t have those where you are from now do they?” and “Gosh, the temperature changed! So crazy! Only in Indiana!” It is enough to make one feel like bashing in their skull with an old mercury thermometer.

Anyways… the travel blogger equivalent is that no matter where they go, who they meet, or how long they stay there, the blogger always describes the people as “so friendly”. They might add a handful of meaningless qualifiers on to their statement to hide the fact that their statement was completely without value to begin with. Anyways, I can’t really say whether in my experience people were particularly friendly. I didn’t really interact with many people, and those interactions that I did have were almost exclusively in some sort of professional context without much room for rudeness, or for that matter, politeness.

What I can judge fairly well is the scenery. That is, landscapes and anything that isn’t something that someone built. When I travel I don’t really focus on buildings or people so much as I do on terrain. Ireland’s mountains may be better described as “aspiring hills”, but it does still have some lovely beaches and seaside locales, some of which look *squints* vaguely familiar.

Is it just me or does this one spot in Northern Ireland look an awful lot like Pyke…and the Stormlands…and Dragonstone…

Referencing the HBO adaptation of A Song of Ice and Fire kinda bummed me out just now. Moment of silence for all the plotlines that were senselessly murdered.

This is supposed to be a travel blog, and yet I have done nothing in that thread but complain about other travel bloggers. Let’s see if I can rectify this most grievous of errors. While the cities of Northern Ireland are quite nice, their food is decent, there is an acceptably low number of people out and about at any given time, and they have what seems like a functional public transport system, the countryside of Northern Ireland is much more lovely. Mostly because the countryside of any region is almost by necessity more lovely than the cities of that same region, but also because, and this is not even one of my better-formed opinions so beware, Northern Ireland has an above average countryside. Green grassy hills with old stone walls and sheep, sheep, and more sheep. I mean…I can look out the window right now and see sheep, so that isn’t really special. (that’s a lie, its night time, but were it daytime, I totally could) I still found it to be quite nice…so that’s a thing…someone would say…

 

I see you have decided to visit my blog. Maybe you got lost? 

Never criticize a rifleman until you have walked a mile in his shoes. That way he’ll be barefoot, and you’ll be out of range. – 2nd Target Company

Does that quote have anything to do with my blog? Not. In. The. SLIGHTEST. 

 

…so what was i doing here? oh yeah…ireland

Now, I’m about to write a whole lot about travelling. I have done more of it than most, but am still very inexperienced. Even if I weren’t, my temperament and demeanor mean that anything I write here will be almost, but not quite, entirely unlike someone else’s experience. This of course means that not only will my experiences be unhelpful, but that they will actively work to shift one’s expectations to that which will not fit one’s experience. That said, if there are any particularly dedicated masochists in the crowd, they may want to stay for the dumpster fire/trainwreck/brutal murder of the English language & sentence structure that is to follow.

On May 14th I found myself standing outside an airport with a ludicrously large fountain Ski (its amazing, your life is incomplete without it. (by this I mean that once you discover it you will invariably gain unpleasant amount of weight and therefore have found what will “complete” your life. (He’s saying it’ll be the death of you.))) and absolutely no clue where to go. After roughly ten minutes of standing on the curb simultaneously dreading someone trying to talk to me and desperately hoping that someone will try and talk to me so that I may find out where I am supposed to go, I finally realized that a good move would be to follow the people, and the people were going into the airport. This conveniently enough took me right where I needed, and only a minute or two late.

Now, you may wonder what that has to do with my experience in Ireland, and I am happy to tell you that it has absolutely nothing to do with my experience in Ireland. I am putting into context these next few sentences about my expectations for Ireland. One does not read ^ that ^ and expect to find someone who has the slightest clue of what to expect. 

I realize that I have given literally nothing but contextualization up to this point…and if you aren’t a fan of context…that sucks because right now I am contextualizing further contextualization. (its so meta! (not really, don’t listen to everyone on the internet who calls something meta, they don’t know what it means. (I know I certainly don’t.))) A precursor to my enjoyment of anything is that I do it with people I enjoy. Apparently I have an excessively low tolerance for most obnoxious behavior, and so find that I very much do not enjoy most people. In fact one might say that rather than liking most people, I dislike most people, and they would still have enough room to say that I have enough disdain for most people that I can, at a moments notice, write off entire groups of people. Remember this, as it will come up very often. 

Two generalizations came to mind in the first few hours of the trip, generalizations to be reinforced for some time – Nothing takes the luster and excitement out of travel quite like an airport, and nothing takes the promise and potential out of a person quite like meeting them. I’ve been to the UK before (actually I’ve been to a lot of Europe before, but that’s a ramble for another time) and I was quite depressed by my time there.

I described my companions, those who I would be spending the next two weeks with as inflicting upon me their “dull, driveling, dronings”. I laid out my expectations for Belfast as follows:

In reality, I don’t anticipate much to be different. The UK is not remarkably unlike home. They have fun accents, are shorter, and drive on the left, oh and have more reasonable portion sizes. Other than this, people are much the same, just with a different take on history.

Me…like a month ago

Upon arriving in Belfast, I was equally uninterested remarking “This is a city. I have a bit of dislike for cities, too many people, too little privacy.”

With beginnings like these, one cannot help but be bewildered that I found some of the most excellent people I have ever met on this trip, and that I would find myself enjoying my time more than I could have anticipated.

Now let that be a lesson to getting lost on the internet!