Derry

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Derry - what can I say about Derry. Right before we got into Derry we passed gaurds armed with machine guns and a few hours after we left Derry we heard on the radio there was a bomb threat on the bridge we crossed to leave town. In between I saw a city that seemed to be divided like night and day. There was the Loyalist section of town (British Protesant) and the Republican section (Irish Catholic) of town. We drove through some of the Protestant area when we got into town and there was I.R.A. graffetti everywhere. Saoirse (Gaelic for Freedom) was spaypainted in many places and the Protestant neighborhoods had the United Kingdom colors all along the curbs and loyalty murals on the sides of the houses. The main part of the town was surrounded by the old castle walls. Inside the walls was something very foriegn to me. There were watch towers with cameras and listening devices everywhere, there were tall steel fences with pointed and serraded edges, there were beams extending a few feet out from the guard towers in each direction. These beams had metal netting attached to them in order to a create a net or cover around the buildings to protect from bombs. From the western side of the walls we could see the Irish Catholic neighborhoods, they were wuch like the Protestant neighborhoods, murals, curb colors, and graffetti. We saw the Bloody Sunday muesum. Below is a picture of one of the Murals from the Irish side of town. I felt very uneasy taking pictures here - maybe because we had Rebublic of Ireland tags, maybe because I had never seen anything like this before in my life. I was not scared, just not sure what was acceptable and unacceptable. Derry was a very interesting place, I would love to learn more about the history of this city.

I.R.A. Mural in Derry N. Ireland I.R.A. Mural up close

It was in Derry where Bloody Sunday happened. Sunday January 30, 1972 - British paratroopers shot and killed fourteen civilians during a civil rights march.