Belfast city tour

So today I managed 4 important things.

• To move into my new flat
• To go on Belfast city bus tour
• To buy my duvet, pillows and bedsheets
• To eat my first fish and chips and to drink Guiness beer

I am happy thanks to all of this :). But today I would like to write mainly about Belfast as a city. Old Belfast had a castle and was on a bit different place than Belfast today. The old center you could find under biggest McDonald in city now. The name has it´s origin in irish Béal Feirste, meaning mouth of the sandbanks, which refers to an underground river in Belfast called Farset. This river is closest to the surface on the place where blue fish statue is. Guide told us that whoever kisses the fish will become smart. I think it´s some kind of twisted irish humor. Watching the stupid people kissing fish statue.

Person kissing fish and becomming smart

City of Belfast is still very proud of building Titanic which was manifestation of great Victorian engineering. People sometimes forget this in light of the tragedy that hapenned. Belfast inhabitants like to say "Titanic was fine when it left from here. Problem was english captain, scottish navigator and canadian iceberg." In Belfast there is beautiful building of Titanic museum. It should remind us of the shape of the ship. Unfortunately, from height it seems more like an iceberg.

Titanic museum

In the storage where parts of Titanic were stored are Titanic studios now. It´s one of the biggest studios for shooting movies and series. Now it´s place where Game of Thrones is produced! In the docks there is another valuable thing in Belfast but this one I don´t understand much. There are 2 giant cranes, 134m wide, one is called Samson and the other one Goliath. Don´t ask me what´s so cool about them :D. They look absolutely horrible on any touristic object in souvenir shops.

Goliath and Samson

Interesting places are high walls which separate areas where the conflict between unionists and republicans were the most rough. It´s possible to see levels, how the walls were built higher and higher thanks to better and better shooting abilities of both sides. Now the walls are filled with peace messages, notes, quotes and signatures of visitors. I´ve joined them too.

See the levels?

My note for you!

Free us all from the prison of mistrust, misunderstanding and misdeeds...

All around Belfast there are also beautiful murals. Most of them are pacifistic but the newest ones are starting to be of any possible kind for example history and so on. I will make a mural hunt for some other post.

Mural

I am planning to make also hunt for romanian beggars (locals told me there are thousands of them). I´ll have to ask them if they are really from Romania. It seems there is much more of them in the evening. But I´ll have to approach to it systhematicaly. Another hunt I plan is for CCTV cameras. Belfast is full of security cameras. They are everywhere you look. Only in the city center there is more than 200 of them. They watch us day and night. But who are they?
There is also a beautiful cathedral and lots and lots of different churches. They even have here something which looks like a Big Ben.

Cathedral

Cathedral

Clock tower

I nearly forgot about city hall. It is center of city center and perfect point how to orient yourself in city. Around it starts most of the city buses. If you look at it, it reminds of Capitol.

I think I provided you now the most famous things. Other smaller and maybe not so known will come during the semester. They are all very cool too :). The city feels somewhat small, it is sometimes dirty like all other cities but there is unexpectidly lots of parking lots. Probably because of bombing.

Motto of the day: Every university city is probably quite old and has rich history. No matter what city you choose to study in, you will be surprised how many interesting things you can meet there.