Witty Little Knitter

This is the city that gave the world its worst ever maritime disaster, and turned it into a tourist attraction; similarly, we are perversely proud of our thousands of murders, our wounds constantly on display. 

 

The bit about the Titanic is something I also noticed. It's like one day the NI tourism board sat together and said "What could we do to distract the visitors from The Troubles? I know! The Titanic was built here! Let's focus on that."

The second part...well I can't quite disagree there either. How people in Belfast (and NI in general) treat the past sometimes seems strange to foreigners. I mean there are solemn memorials and museums (I went to the Bloody Sunday Museum in Derry and it was among the most chilling experiences of my life), there's also quite a lot of black humour about the subject, which is also understandable but there is also stuff like...chocolate. You can get Falls Road chocolate there, filled with peppermint cream (Falls Road is/was very much the heartland of Republican Belfast and the Republican colour is green) and Shankill Road chocolate filled with orange cream (ditto for the Loyalist heartland the colour of which is...well orange). Well and that is just...weird. You could probably also file that under 'black chocolate humour' but mainly that's just...weird.