Ireland-2019 (Belfast and the end of our tour)

It's our last day, and this is Susie Millar, our tour guide talking to us about the Titanic.  The ship was built in Belfast, the largest ship building city in the world at the time.  She is standing in front of a memorial to all those who died when the ship went down.  Susie's story is personal, and she waited until today to tell it.

Susie's great-grandfather, Thomas helped build the Titanic.  A recent widower, he signed on as a deck engineer on the ship, hoping to find a home in America for his two sons.  He left Susie's grandfather the two coins you see here, telling him not to spend them until they meet again.

Susie has written a book about it and has been instrumental in helping families reconnect with their Titanic roots. 

There is an irony to this whole story.  Susie was recently married to David, an American economist, and now she is struggling to get a Green Card so she can work in the US.  The present political climate is making that very difficult.  Luckily, David just got a work permit from Ireland.  We hope it all works out for them.

  

The bad times in Northern Ireland are over for now, but there are many murals in the city depicting conflicts around the world.  They are changed on a regular basis.  There is still a wall in the city separating two areas with very different cultural identities.  Fortunately this represents only a small part of the Belfast population.

Belfast has a great exhibit in City Hall where you can learn all kinds of things about it's history and culture.  In one exhibit they explained some of the local sayings.

 

Only 11 miles separates this part of Ireland from Scotland, and we visited a museum dedicated to the Scotch-Irish and their influence around the world.  Several US presidents, starting with Andrew Jackson have direct Scotch-Irish ancestry.  In the potato famine, Ireland lost 1 million people to starvation, and 1 million to a mass migration.  Their population has not yet returned to pre-famine numbers.

I spoke earlier about Ireland's influence on American music.  After our farewell dinner, we had more opportunity to experience some of that Irish music.  Kudos to George for catching on to the dancing so quickly.  This event was a real treat, as each song/dance was proceeded with a short description melding the music with Ireland's long history.