Belfast II

Belfast is okay. But just okay. I got up there at 3:30ish and our ticket to the museum/experience was for five. Maddie met me at the bus station and we just started walking that way. It didn't take as long as I thought it was going to take us. We ended up getting there a little after four, but there's this cool "honesty box" cafe/art gallery place a block away.

The Titanic Experience is pretty cool. And it's brand new so it's not all broken yet. It takes you all the way through the economy before ship building became the huge thing, planning, building, outfitting, sailing, crash, sinking, aftermath, and "rediscovery." The coolest bits to me were planning and outfitting. There are all kinds of pictures from the White Star line showing these huge rooms full of huge desks and drafters drawing away at different sections. And then this massive empty room where they put it all together and drew it in chalk on the floor. For the building part there's a ride. I wasn't expecting a ride at all. It's short and slow, but still. They talked mostly about riveting and how it's done and what a pain in the ass it is, and therefore how impressive it is that ships this huge were ever finished. Next floor had lots of virtual stuff. One room had screens on 3 sides had a video on a loop which showed what you'd have seen if a camera could have gone straight up through every deck. They recreated a first-class room and had projectors going showing a first-class woman talking to the bellboy. They have samples of all the curtains, carpets, and dishes. I thought the part about the sinking was done well. All they had on the walls were the radio calls to and from the ship and the times and a pixelated thing showing the way it broke in half and sunk. It didn't dwell on the gory details so much. The last part is the rediscovery. I think that bit could have been done better. They basically have it set up like a theatre and you can watch the video they took from the little robot thing that went down there. And that's grand, but the commentary is dumb. It's two Americans talking and they just say dumb things and make dumb jokes. But if you just look at the video it's pretty cool.

We went out and it was pretty sketch. It's just a kind of run down city. It hasn't really gotten back on it's feet. And it's interesting because Derry hasn't really either, but at least Derry has some culture to it. Belfast doesn't have that. I think it's still pretty divided with no physical boundaries. I talked to a guy that was really glad that I said Derry and then there was a guy who sternly corrected me: "You mean Londonderry." And I'm not trying to say that there aren't nice people there--Gerry at the hostel is so nice and welcoming--but there's just something unsettling about the place. The Garda all over the place doesn't help either.