It was 30 years ago this month that I set off on my first trip to Ireland. It was practically my first time traveling anywhere actually, and somehow, my nineteen year old self decided that a solo trip to another continent would be a good starting point for my life of adventure. Just traveling alone to Ireland was not quite daring enough, so I decided to begin my trip with a stay in Belfast.
Northern Ireland in the 1980s was racked with “the Troubles”, the fierce partisan conflict between Unionists, who were loyal to the crown and wanted to remain a part of the United Kingdom, and Nationalists, who wanted Northern Ireland to join with the Republic of Ireland for a United Ireland. Thousands of people were killed during the Troubles, which did not end until the Good Friday Accord of 1998. At the time of my visit, Belfast was a sharply divided city, patrolled by the British Army, with devastating unemployment and fierce tensions between factions.
Into this difficult and dangerous setting I bumbled, a naive teenager from rural Vermont. I had arranged to join a group through the Vermont based Work Camps International, which set up volunteer opportunities around the globe. In exchange for food and housing, I was to spend two weeks working with a group of volunteers from Northern Ireland and the rest of Europe under the auspices of Giro’s Cafe, a vegetarian, punk, anarchist group.
Just getting to Belfast was a harrowing ordeal, as I was completely unfamiliar with traveling and was astonishingly unprepared for the journey. Add to that a terrible flight that would have been comic had it not been so traumatic. I had purchased a one way ticket with Air Pakistan from New York to Dublin, as their Belfast flight was somehow unbookable. The flight I was on was their first on this route, and was non-stop to Shannon then on to Dublin. Departure was delayed but unremarkable, but hours into the flight we were suddenly landing, in the dark, in a place claimed to be Iceland. Passengers were grumbling, but we were assured this was a scheduled refueling stop (for our non-stop flight). There was nothing to see out the plane windows, and there were lots of clankings and clangings from the belly of the plane. In my memory, this unscheduled stop lasted hours, though it may not have been that long. I can only say for certain that it lasted long enough for my fellow passengers grumbling to turn to anger and finally outrage at being held in the dark in an unknown destination while clearly something major was happening to the plane!
When we finally got underway again, we were informed that when we landed in Shannon all luggage would be offloaded, and passengers would have a certain amount of time to claim their luggage and anything remaining would then be reloaded and continue on to Dublin. In other words, Dublin travelers would be trapped for an extra 90 minutes or longer on this plane awaiting our luggage to (hopefully) rejoin us! This was too much to bear, and I followed the lead of my seatmates and decided to get out of there and find my way to Dublin and then Belfast some other way.
I had no idea what to expect when getting off the plane, but I somehow managed to get through immigration and collect my heavy rucksack before it got reloaded onto the plane. Just after passing through customs and the door that warned there was no return beyond this point, I realized I had left my bag holding my wallet, all my money, and my passport at a table on the other side! Panicked and sleep deprived, I could think of nothing to do but stand in the middle of the arrivals hall and cry. This was my first introduction to the incredible kindness of the Irish people, as a concerned official stopped to ask me whatever was the matter. Upon hearing my tale of woe, he nipped back through to where I told him I had taken out my purse, and within a minute he had restored my purse with all its contents safely back to me. I was one very lucky fool!
Coming next: Part 2: Two weeks in Belfast