I also have a particular fancy for my adopted nation's cricket team. When i saw the fixture between Ireland and England way back in February this year, i knew i had to be there.
I'd been wanting to book my flights for months. As dodgy as they are, Ryan Air had them for £20 return. Bargain! The only thing stopping me was not knowing if i was working that week. It's the one thing that really shits me about working at Sky. All these cheap flights, and i can't book any because i only get my shifts a week or so in advance. Thankfully, all the moons, stars and editing shifts aligned to make the trip possible. The only down side was flights had now reached £70 each way. I promptly booked with Easyjet instead.
It wasn't only the cricket that excited me about heading to Northern Ireland's capital. I'd heard so much about the problems up there throughout my life thanks to mum so I finally wanted to see if the hoo-har really was worth all the hoo-harring over. It was also going to be the most hastily arranged trip on the tightest budget i'd ever made.
Getting to Stansted (at 90 mins drive away, how that airport is classified as London is beyond me) was a breeze, as was getting into Belfast. But then trouble struck. I went to an ATM/Cashpoint/hole in the wall to get some cash out, but there wasn't any there. No way! I'd checked before I left that i had a few hundred quid. Nope. Nichts. Nothing. Fuck! What on earth is going on. After a heated discussion with a bank teller, i'd discovered my ISP had decided not to just take out one 5 month payment, but three 5 month payments. I managed to scrounge around enough money to pay my hostel and used the little that was left in my Aussie bank account to buy me booze.
Hostels are strange things. Some i've stayed in have been soulless corridors of bunk beds and full of those overly clean suitcase backpackers. Others have had that nightclub effect, where at night when you're downstairs at the bar pissed with a bunch of Americans they're fantastic. When you're having breakfast the next morning, it looks like someone's pissed all over the walls, and the floor is sticky. Arnie's sat somewhere in the middle. He was cosy, and so was his place.
I shared a room with an English bloke called Mike, and Fatima, a French girl of African/Arabic descent. Mike had a bit of a dilemma. He was born to a Polish Jewish father and Irish catholic mother, which had seem to piss the catholic side off to the point of disowning him. So for the last 10 years, he had planned a 6 week motorbiking tour of his Mother's homeland to hopefully make some connection with it. However, any reconnection with family seemed doomed on his first day when he road his bike into Newry, they refused to even go near him. That night we decided we'd both had pretty bad days so we should at least go and see some well known local establishments.
'You know this place has survived over 35 bombings?' Mike casually pointed out. I spat out my guinness. '..uhh, what?' i replied. 'Well, not exactly bombs in this place', pointing over to the Europa Hotel. 'That hotel was one of the main targets of the IRA. The Crown just happened to cop a fair bit of the debris. There hasn't been an attack in ages'. I put my heart back under my rib cage. We moved on to what would have been one of those shitty Irish themed bars anywhere in the world, but because it was in Ireland, we classified it as authentic. Inside it was Irish and shitty, but they had authentic guinness, just at an irish and shitty price. We both had big days coming up so promptly called it a night. A big tick to Belfast's night life though.
The next morning, i was up before anyone in the whole hostel except for a Swiss German girl who'd been studying in Belfast for the past 2 years. She was trying to sell her car before she headed back to Switzerland on the weekend. It was a interesting trend someone pointed out to me earlier. A lot more students had now started to come to Belfast to study. It's exactly what the city needs. At the very very worst it'll at least give the two waring sides someone new to direct their anger towards. It was great chatting to an interesting random. It really is one of the great things about hostels and traveling.
After a stale 75p muffin for breakfast, i headed down to Stormont for the cricket. It was a cute little ground with around 6,500 temporary seats and no cover from the weather. This would come back to haunt me.
The differences i had noticed in English cricket seemed to also feature in Irish cricket. Everyone's polite, nobody really claps and gets excited when they should, and there's no real signs of dissent that you so commonly see on the other side of world. I sat up the back of a stand and watched England self destruct between the rain showers. They managed to scramble to 202/9 at the break. A 45 minute break stretched out to 3 hours with the wind and rain making it unbearably cold. Everywhere I went in Belfast I made sure I had a raincoat. I swear i packed it that day. Turns out i didn't. I never bothered to go to a doctor to work out exactly what i had, but the symptoms sounded exactly like acute bronchitis. That stupid move put me in bed for 2 weeks straight. The game did resume, and Ireland fell 3 agonising runs short. I was almost there for history in the making. Maybe next year. I'll defiantly be bringing the raincoat.
On my last morning i thought it was time to make an effort to see the darker side of Belfast. I didn't have to walk far to find my first murals and loyalist flags. They're everywhere. It's peaceful now and most people you talk to want change but there's that minority that still hold on to the past. As I made my way back to Arnie's, I ran into the Swiss girl again. She'd finally sold her car, and was going shopping before flying back home. I also finally got paid too. Time for me to go shopping!
I noticed one thing about Belfast city on my last day. Unlike it's counterpart in the south, it's yet to be taken over by tourists. Especially the ones wielding the almighty U.S dollar. I hope for its sake it stays like that for just a little while longer so others can enjoy it too.
Where I stayed:
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