After yesterday's non-stop "city highlights" tour on a double decker bus, I decided to spend today retracing some of the sites iI'd briefly cruised by yesteday. On foot, spending several hours, I walked away from the nice, friendly hostel i'm staying at, in the University/Botanic Avenue area (called The Ark) where Aussie boys, Chris, Simon and Scott have great attitudes and welcome smiles for me each day! I walked past City Hall and over to West Belfast, ground zero for much of Belfast's bloody days of the past (the still simmering rage not so far below the surface of the "peace" here now). Once i got to Falls Road, the Catholic area, i saw the Serenity Wall, a series of painted murals along the cement fence that symbolize many of the current and ongoing world crisis areas and political hot spots. The murals are in support of other oppressed people like the Palestinians, Kurds, Basques, and of course the Catholic minority here in Belfast. (The one featuring Bush was pretty hilarious...check it out when you come here if he's re-elected). I braved today's cold, windy conditions which only added to the stark, bleak setting i was in. I met two sisters from Barcelona, Laura and Martha, who had taken the bus up from Dublin to see the same sights. The three of us walked together up from Falls Rd to see the "Peace Line", a 4 km section of concrete, corogated steel and chain link wall that separates the Catholic neighborhood from the Protestant one. While there a couple of rocks were thrown over but missed us by miles, as the velocity it takes to hurl a rock over a 30 foot wall makes it hard to hit someone just standing on the other side of it. All too real, though. A few minutes later, on the Protestant side of the street, two young boys, not older than7 0r 8 clammered out of the bushes and asked me if i smoked, a veiled hint at wanting some cigarettes. Then, we headed a bit farther down the Peace Line to where you could write a message of hope, peace or other sentiments. ALOHA MEANS LOVE, I wrote, along with drawing a big peace sign. Some black taxi tours stopped too, athough i felt better about doing it on my own, as you really get the vibe better on foot. The peace line, built in 1970, is supposed to protect the minority Catholics in their homes, but with all the wire, fencing and so-called "protection", it really seems to do the opposite and keep them segregated. Then we headed over to Shankill district, a heavily protestant area and home for many of the Ulster Freedom Fighters, the hardline loyalists supporters of keeping N. Ireland part of the UK and separate from the Republic. This entire area is filled with graphiti, many murals with the clenched red fist of Ulster, quotes like "No Surrender", etc. The IRA bombing site of October 23, 1993 had a memorial with fresh flowers on it, in a nearby park, commemerating the 11th anniversary of it last week, with a card inscribed, "We will never forget you" and the names of the victims on it. I've seen very few police while i've been in Belfast, and the city brags that it's a very safe place for tourists (or ist that terrorists?!), and no armored Land Rovers either, though i hear they roam this part of Belfast often. But with the ever present gates, security cameras on police stations, primary schools with windows covered by steel grates and bars, and some neighborhood shops with pull down shutters amidst dark, brown, dirty streets and storefronts, it still felt to me like a tenous place to be. I bravely (or stupidly) asked a man on the street why most of Belfast wanted to remain aligned with Britain and not Ireland, (since geographically they're IN Ireland) and wondered if they were afraid of change or what....He basically replied, in a curt tone, "We don't fear change, we don't WANT change. We've always been a part of Britain!". While i've been here, a N. Belfast family was taken hostage and the mother was forced to a bank to withdraw funds for ransom of her husband and kids, and another Belfast man was taken, bound and gagged and beaten, left by the side of the road...he didn't want to tell authorities but evidently it was at the hands of the IRA. The peace is fragile here at best, and even the favorite (Scottish) football teams are Catholic (Celtics) and Protestant (Rangers). When they play each other, violence between the fans is not uncommon. No one believes in neutrality, even in sport, I guess. It's been an eye-opening experience and I'm glad I saw it first hand, not to mention that I'm glad i'm here now and not 10 years ago when it would have been dangerous to walk around the parts of the city that today I did without (much) fear. Hopefully, once i get to Dublin, I can upload tons of photos I've taken both here and in Derry, to give all a greater perspective and visual clues to Northern Ireland realities.