We stayed Thursday in the clumsily-named Derry-Londonderry, which is either part of Great Britain, part of Ireland, or both, as the hyphen would suggest. What it doesn't suggest is a system in equilibrium. One of the more recent landmarks is the Peace Bridge, a truly pretty pedestrian bridge that crosses the River Foyle (though honestly, I like the sound of River Liffey, which is in Dublin, so I've been calling all the rivers that). Once across the river, you're in a big empty area, which is perhaps filled with merrymakers on a warm summer day, but this was a cool cloudy day, and it was deserted. They do have a lot of graffiti here, some of it partisan and some of it pleading for tolerance.
Then I walked back. We ate dinner in the hotel restaurant and went to bed. I slept badly.
Derry is a walled city. In fact, it refers to itself as The Walled City, so I decided to take a morning stroll around the wall (you can walk all around the city up there). I've been in lots of medieval towns and been up on the walls in a couple. The warfare aspect of them just always seemed very distant. You're up on a hill and you're defending your hill from the assholes in the walled city on the next hill. Although the wall was built, I think, in the 17th century, it continued to hold a place in the culture of the city all the way through The Troubles, so all the historical markers are relatively recent.
Pretty cheery stuff, eh?
The city is not very big, though it sprawls a bit once you get outside the walls. It seems kind of poor, especially compared to Dublin, which bustled from very early in the morning until late at night. Here nothing was open, everything looked kind of shabby. One of the big downtown stores is a burnt out shell, who knows why. No energy at all, at 8:30 on a weekday morning. The only place I saw people were at the bus terminal.
None of these things would have bothered me by itself, but the combination made me incredibly anxious.
So what do you thik could possibly calm me down after all this? I went in an supermarket. A Tesco to be specific. I bought a Dairy Milk bar and some peas and some carrot batons, which are what I guess I'd call carrot sticks. And I paid with some of the British money that I got. Gave the cashier and 20 pound note and some coins and she gave me "fuffteen" and 20P back. And that did make me feel a bit better. I'm ready to leave though.
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