The move to Scotland

Hello chumps!

And so the journey continues through Ireland - The land of Ire. This stop was Belfast. Unfortunately, this young city was made popular by what the locals call "The Troubles". U2 has made a couple songs concerning "The Troubles" such as Sunday Bloody Sunday and The Streets Have No Names. A few years ago, this was one of the four B's that were to never be visited, which also included Bosnia, Baghdad and Beirut. Now though, "The Troubles" have gone through much resolve and is rapidly making a steady recovery to peace between the city.

This could probably go for every popular touristy city in the world, but we know this is the case for at least Belfast. Turning up to Belfast on a Saturday afternoon with no booked accommodation at about 4pm is a very bad idea, especially when the Irish National trampoline competition is in town. Who would have thought trampoline competitions were so popular? Not us. We walked to the very ends of town to find a place to sleep, only to find a sign on each hostel saying "Sorry! Booked out, try 'such and such' down the road", only to find that 'such and such' recommended trying the hostel we were just at! We were extremely fortunate to stumble across a chap who owned a hostel who was coming back from the supermarket. He had one double bed left, but took us back to his hostel so we could ring all the other hostels in town to see if there was anything cheaper and not so gay. After discovering that this was the last available bed in the entire city, we paid our money.

The owners name was Will and was extremely hospitable. After introducing us to the local beer "Coors Light" (Which may I point out is 4.8%, some light beer), Will fed us some of his favorite whiskey and invited us on a pub crawl with some other hostellians. A great night was had by all. I managed to convince Ben to try Cognac, which we both thought was awful. At a great traditional Irish bar, we met an almost famous folk-music star by the name of Mark who introduced us to his awesome country side band "The Lost Brothers". You can see them here - http://www.myspace.com/thelostbrothersmusic

Please look at them, because we promised him that we would bring their music to Australia. They even have an lp for all you vinyl lovers. Whilst here, Mark asked us "Lads, you keen for some Sambucca?" and when he returned he said "I have no idea what this stuff is, but let's do it!". It had a similar odour, taste, appearance and viscosity as methylated spirits, and it probably had the same affect. The stuff was awful.

After doing most of the touristy sort of things in Belfast, it was decided that the country side was our next desire. No-one in Belfast knows anything about any country town, except that backpackers should not go there, and that there are only expensive B&B's.

We ended up changing hostels due to the fact that we were spending far too much for such a crappy room. We found our new hostel, which had the cool name of Vagabonds, much better and more importantly more, much cheaper. The place was run by backpackers and were really cruisy and played awesome music, and had incense going a lot of the time. The tv room had heaps of good classics such as "Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas", "The Godfather", and "Chopper". They even had a huge Conga and Didgeridoo that were free for anyone to use, which we made plenty of use of. The place was awesome.

Whilst in Belfast, Benjamin thought of seeing a movie rather than just get drunk again, so we went and saw "The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo" with a couple of Americans. The cinema is very similar price to Australia, which is far too much, but it was still a rather pleasant night out. No more than a day later, we discovered an underground cinema that screened the bizarre, strange and awesome film culture we all so passionately love. One such film was called "Blow Job", which was a black and white film in which the camera focuses soley on a man's face while receiving the ancient act of fellatio. Such a film featured nothing pornographic, but rather just the transformation of a man's face as he passes the various phases of pleasure. We didn't have a chance to see any cool or bizarre films, but again, we have a reason to return to Belfast. There were soooooo many films that looked as if they would fascinate.

On the second last day of our visit, we booked what's known as a "Black Cab" tour. This is basically a tour that is run by the Belfast taxi company that takes it's passengers through all the "troubled" areas in Belfast. What makes this tour special is that all the chaps that run these tours actually lived through this period and experienced it first hand. I do recall our driver telling us "We aren't tour guides, we're just cab drivers". What made the tour a bit more special was that the driver wasn't simply reading a sheet of paper they're supposed to tell everyone, but rather describes his experience through the 'troubled times'. It was very confronting hearing his story, hearing about the five times he'd been held at gun-point, and when his friend was shot down and killed right beside him. If anyone was to go to Belfast, even though quite expensive, I would recommend this tour. No two tours would ever be the same I imagine.

I should mention our snow experience. Benjamin and myself were just rocking out in our room listening to some of The Snowdroppers or something, when we had a glance outside and noticed that there was stuff falling from the sky. It was too slow to be rain, and not big enough for hail. Yeeeeah man, snow! We put on like 50 layers of clothes and ran outside and stood there for a while trying to catch it in our mouth, but achieved in simply getting it in our eye, which hurts. It didn't matter! The only thing that sucked was that as soon as it hit the ground, it melted...Ahh well.



After Belfast, we flew to Glasgow, Scotland for our next leg of the trip. Our first impression wasn't great. Like any large city, it's been modernised and no-one is really that friendly, regardless how Australian you may be. We found a pattern of the local folk, especially in the older generations. Somewhere through the conversation, they all seemed to get to a point where they would say "Why are you here? You shouldn't be here, maybe you should just go back home". Needless to say, there were a select few of the Scottish that seemed to be pretty excited to meet some Australian folk. I can't report that much on Glasgow to be perfectly honest, as there wasn't a great deal of history left in the place and there were only shops, clubs and pubs around. We did want to hire a bicycle and have a large ride around the city, but left it too late unfortunately.

Today we caught a bus to Stirling, a town almost an hour North of Glasgow. Our impression is much different here. The people seem to be friendlier, the place is much more beautiful, and there is cool stuff to see everywhere, including a huge William Wallace monument, the Stirling castle and god knows what else. We intend on a rather large day tomorrow.

I'll leave you with that for now.

Tar!