jawnbc | Tá mé go maith, go raibh maith agat.

Last day in Belfast. The conference was great: well organized, with an interesting programme in very good facilities. The food was dreadful (fried or sugar) though. They even arranged some free-ish (we paid for the cabs) tours of different parts of the city. Yesterday it was An Cultúrlann, the Irish language community centre.

In the early 60s a handful of Irish speakers (from the gaeltacht of Donegal mostly) decided to try and raise their kids in Irish. They went so far as to build houses on the same street, so there would be a critical mass of Irish spoken. As this iniative grew they decided they wanted to have their kids schooled as gaelige--to which the (UK) government said "fook awf." So they started the school on its own (with kids as young as 2.5 in early infants) and fought tooth and nail to keep it open. Eventually more schools opened up: today there are over a dozen Irish schools in Belfast proper, as well at least one secondary school. Many families schooled their children in irish only until secondary school, where they switched to English language schools.

I was very excited about visiting An Cultúrlann: Nanny was a bilingual school teacher in Galway before emigrating, and I've made innumerable half arse attempts to learn the language myself. I'd not ever been in a space where Irish was la langue quotidienne. We were welcomed and brought to a meeting room. Sineád gave a very personal talk about her experiences as one of the first kids in Belfast schooled in irish: for her family it was wholly a cultural (rather than political) decision. Then Janet, the executive director of POBAL (the umbrella Irish language culture NGO) spoke about the struggles of the gaelgiori in Northern Ireland. Sadly she went on so long that we had to depart before the next speaker got his chance...and before we got any sense of the space.

An Cultúrlann is on the Falls Rd, one of the hot spots during the Troubles (along with Shankill Rd). Which a typical UK working class neighbourhood high street. There are a few murals, but aside from Republican flags or signs (and Unionist ones in most of the rest of the city, save the CBD), it looks like...Belfast.

I'm still reserving judgement on the place. Unlike the Republic the culture here feels not at all natural. I still feel a fair bit of tension and anxiety on the streets--though I wholly agree that for locals it seems much much more relaxed. Many great changes have come in the last 10 years, but there is a long, long way to go.

This arvo I went shopping with S., my PhD supervisor. We had a grand time, and even found a resto that served vegetables and proper salad. *squee* Tonight's packing before an early rise tomorrow for my flight to Ljubljana.