Belfast

You never know when a certain day is going to be of particular significance in your life. September the 7th, 2011, was such a day for Liesl, and possibly more potently for yours truly.

It was the first day of our senior year of high school. We were driving in my mom's car, myself at the wheel and Liesl in the passenger seat, on the way to a Rancid concert in Anaheim. I'd seen them twice already, but this would be Liesl's first time.

While, technically speaking, Liesl and I knew each other fairly well, having gone to school together for five years at this point, we weren't particularly close friends. We were friendly, had a mutual interest in punk music, and I had a driver's license and car to use.

I remember specifically that we were driving through that long stretch of coast that is Camp Pendleton: ocean on the left, chaparral on the right. We hadn't yet come to that funny structure that looks like a giant golf ball when we entered into a conversation about plans for next year.

This was quickly becoming a depressing subject for me, having little to no aspirations in my life other than getting the hell out of that hell-hole under the innocuous name of high school. When Liesl asked what I was planning on doing next year, my heart sank, and I replied dejectedly that I had no idea. I may have mentioned some feeble hopes of having a job, and getting my own place, more for the sake of something to say than because of any real convictions I had about this. I knew that I was absolutely not going to college, but I didn't know what I was going to do.

I asked what her plans were, she began talking about how she was going to apply to some colleges that she was interested in, but that she really wanted to take a gap year before going to school. But she said that in order for her to get deferred enrollment, she would need to be doing something that a university would think was a good use of her time, like doing volunteer work, rather than just sitting around for a year.

She said that she wanted to travel abroad and volunteer. It would probably be way better to go with another person though, she said, rather than travelling alone. I asked about her best friend and our fellow classmate Emily, and Liesl said that Emily couldn't abandon dance for that long, and even if she wanted to do that, as her friend, Liesl wouldn't let her throw all of her hard work away.

On sudden inspiration it seemed, Liesl said that maybe we could go together, since she wanted a travel partner and I didn't have any plans. That sounded good to me, and I accepted right away; it sounded a lot better than freaking out about potentially having a dead-end life, plus travelling would be fun, and Liesl and I got on well.

So there you have it. That was the inception of our trip. What followed was a totally sick Rancid concert at the House of Blues in Anaheim, which was, funnily enough, basically part of Disneyland. It was in Downtown Disney I think, outside the park. Odd place for a punk show, eh?.

Fast forward one year, two months, twenty-one days and 5,157 miles to Mandela Hall, Belfast, on the 28th of November, 2012, where our trip came full circle.

Liesl had spiked my hair with some expert backcombing and three rounds of hair spray for the show. Little did I realize that not only would I not be washing the hair spray out of my hair for four more days, but that I would actually be adding more every day up until that point. (We had again forgotten to brings towels on this small trip, just like in Dublin).

This was our first experience seeing an American band--a band from California, actually--in a foreign country. It was a great show, and one of the two vocalist/guitarists, Tim Armstrong, had an awesome beard that immediately reminded Liesl and I of Mark's beard. (We think that we may be developing a sort of telepathy).

It was odd, I thought to myself, hearing the crowd singing along to songs--such as one of my personal favorites, Journey to the End of the East Bay--with lyrics paying homage to places that most of them had probably never been before. I've been to the San Francisco Bay area recently, so I had some firsthand conception of what the East Bay was like. It was sort of a backwards experience, actually, because I'm used to listening to songs by British bands that mention places I've never been. Well, actually I've been to London now, which is a common reference.

Liesl was really excited because she found two hats during a show. However, neither of us can really wear hats...

...So we didn't keep them.

We spent most of our time in the city walking around and shopping. Belfast is nice city, and like Dublin, it was decorated for Christmas. We'd written down a list of things to do in the city but it was left at home, and somehow we just sort of edged away from doing the prescribed tourist things. I guess after travelling for a while you just kind of get tired of the famous this, and the renowned that. We just wanted to be in a city, with people, and lots of Christmas decorations and walk around. So that's what we did.

We did see Queens University though--the concert venue was an extension of it I think--and it was lovely. It looked sort of similar to Parliament in London. We also took a quick spin through the Ulster museum, seeing an Egyptian mummy that still had hair.

Look, it's Liesl next to a mural of the characters of The Big Lebowski!:

I got some CDs, and both of us got Christmas sweaters, thought we were severely disappointed to find that ugly/tacky/overly-Christmasy sweaters, ties, and boxers are not a thing here. It was appalling, really, coming from a place where thrift stores put up large signs to advertise their ugly Christmas sweaters. But we both found more subtle Christmas sweaters that we liked:

Our plans for staying with someone in Belfast for free had fallen through not far from the last minute, so we ended up staying in a hostel. Again. Our hostel, Paddy's Palace, had very mixed reviews when we checked it out online, but it was cheap, and we're both on a tight budget, so we stayed there. It was definitely sketchy. One of the two front doors had a strange, tape covered handle in the middle of it on the back side, and all of the bathrooms had broken doors, locks, or toilets. It was also just about as cold in the common areas as it was outside, and it was freezing outside. When we left, we asked for some tape to close a box of rice that we'd bought, and they couldn't find tape, so they put a couple of bandaids on it. That should give you a feel for the place. But the beds were comfortable, and it was in a decent location.

The bus rides to get from Athboy to Belfast and back were very long. I noticed, looking out the window of the bus to Dublin, where we would get a connection to Belfast, that this country has an astounding number of low, grey stone walls. Really, they're everywhere. I think they generally divide fields. These definitely contribute to the ancient vibe this country gives off. Maybe some of these walls are modern, but I tend to associate them with, say, Medieval times, or earlier.

I had my three year vegan anniversary during this short trip to Northern Ireland, and we'd tried to go to a vegan restaurant but it didn't exist. It was the only vegetarian restaurant in Belfast too, so that was a fail. Ireland is beautiful, but I have to say, I'm very excited to go back to England where vegetarians are not alien beings. We're hoping that Christmas ties and Christmas boxers might be more common there as well.

The night after we got back from our trip, we found out that there was a sort of riot in Belfast, at city hall. The Union Flag--the flag of the whole United Kingdom--used to be hanging from the building 365 days a year. But a new measure was just passed that limited the number of days that this flag could be flown to only fifteen days per year. The Loyalists--those loyal to the Crown, also known as Protestants--were enraged by this decision, and forced entry into city hall. A few people were hurt, and there was some property damage. We saw a short news report of this, and it looked really intense. Both of us sort of wished that we were there for this; it's just such a novel thing to us, being in a country where these sort of riots aren't uncommon. I don't think that stuff really happens in the Republic though, just in the North.

So here we are, back at home in our flat. It rained last night, and all day yesterday. Something that Liesl and I have noticed is that people in this part of the world are constantly complaining about the weather, and emphasizing how much it rains. It honestly hasn't rained that much during our trip. Sure, more than it ever does in Southern California, but still not that much. It's usually just a drizzle, too. It actually rained for real yesterday. It even hailed a bit. It was evening, and Liesl looked up at the pitch black sky through our skylight--we have three; I guess they compensate for our other windows being near the floor--and said, "It's hailing!" There was a slight pause, then we both jumped up, grabbed our coats, hurriedly stepped into our shoes and dashed outside. It was so great, I love weather.

When we were in Belfast, we looked for Advent Calendars, but none of them had vegan chocolate. So I came up with an idea for an unconventional Advent Calendar. We wrote down one activity to do each day for the rest of our stay in Ireland, and we cut them into strips and put them in a mug. We draw one everyday, and execute whatever activity it says to do. We have: played hide and seek in the forest, had a picnic, hung out in the Big House, and procrastinated and doing gymnastics, since it was too wet outside. This is a great way to make December more fun. It's perfect, because you can tailor it to your life. Here, we don't have as many Christmas-related activities that we can do--sadly, both of the pianos in the Big House are broken, so we can't even have a Christmas song jam-a-thon, though we do listen to Christmas music pretty much everyday. However, we have a great facility to use, so most of our things are outdoorsy. Today Liesl and I will be: climbing a tree. Sweet.

Cheers,

Stephanie