Due to various reasons I ended up working and living in Belfast, Northern Ireland for a few years and it was a real adventure. I landed a job in a call center and experienced a whole new culture and made loads of new friends. If you can make this leap abroad I recommend it.
Of course it wasn’t all peaches and cream. Finding a suitable flat was a challenge, but when you already have a job lined up getting a NI number (National Insurance) and
setting up a bank account is quite easy.
I keep getting memories about my time over there on my Facebook timeline, which moved me to write about living abroad.
Belfast had quite a troubled past until the ‘Good Friday Agreement’ which made steps in the peace process to end the dreadful period ‘the Troubles’. When I mentioned I had found a job there, people would ask me if it was safe there. I shrugged it off with the notion that if it wasn’t they wouldn’t bring people in.
To be honest, I wasn’t aware on how it was during the Troubles. I’ve seen the news which mostly was about the IRA bomb attacks in mainland UK, but Belfast was just a name in a song for me. Just like everyone, I know the words to ‘Bloody Sunday’ but never read into what happened that day. I knew absolutely nothing about the Troubles.
Living in Belfast made me aware what the conflict entailed. People shared their experiences with me and I was quite horrified that nothing was mentioned during my history classes. I made it my business to educate myself. As an outsider you tend to look at it very much in a black and white vision, but there were definitely so many grey areas during ‘the Troubles’. One thing is certain, a lot of people suffered. But despite all the suffering, the Norn-Iron (Northern Ireland) people managed to keep a positive attitude. No matter how bad shit gets, they throw a good dose of humour against it.
These days I am losing my grip on the Norn-Iron philosophy of ‘Calm yer tits’. I’ve been away from Belfast too long and keep getting worked up again over nothing. But you really learn to wind down yourself living in Belfast. The Dutch are conditioned to be on the clock (well I am). But Norn-Iron take it a step slower and seem to enjoy themselves more in life, even if their government is a bigger heap of shite then mine. Dutch politics is quite mellow compared to Stormont drama. I might write about it one day. 😉
I was lucky to call Belfast my home for 3,5 years. To be able to visit the many great national parks and monuments. To meet and make many great friends and best of all the craic we had. It was my home away from home and if life had a different destiny for me I would have still lived there even with the hassle of Brexit.
