I am in love with Derry.

I won tickets to a FiddleFest for this past weekend, in Derry. Amazingly, plans worked out fairly easily for me to take the bus up on Saturday, attend the events on Saturday and Sunday, stay with a past BVS-er who's working there, and get a lift back to Belfast with her on Monday. And everything about the weekend was class.

Saturday afternoon I just wandered. I had never been to Derry, so I picked up brochures at the Visitor Center and took a self guided tour. Derry (aka Londonderry) is know as the Maiden city, because it has old stone walls the surround the entire city center, and which have never been breeched in any of the three major siezes (very different walls than the "peace walls" of Belfast, although they have a few of those, too). It's the oldest continually inhabited city in Ireland (Northern Ireland?) and saw a lot of the conflict of the "Troubles." Half of the city, the Bogside, a Catholic area, completely barricaded itself in, effectively barricading the British army OUT. There's a huge mural that declares "You are now entering Free Derry" since they would not be overtaken and controlled by the army. The breaking of those barriers, during a civil rights march, is what led to bloody sunday (as sung by Bono) and 14 deaths. I'll post lots of pics of the city, the walls and the murals soon. The whole city is just packed with history, ancient and a new (with riots just this past weekend), stone walks, churches with gardens just tucked into the corners, right on the river Foyle. It's also full of up and coming artists, tons of live music and cozy pubs.

The live music and pubs is what I took advantage of for most of the weekend. The first event I was able to attend was Turtle Island Quartet, a string quartet out of Oakland, CA. They play their classical strings insruments in crazy ways to get bluegrass, folk, rock, Indian, Latin American sounds. Then on Sunday, I went to see the movie, The Red Violin. If you haven't seen it, do. It's just a really beautiful film, with a great score. After that was Candles in the Cathedral with French violinist David Grimal, playing two classical pieces in, get this, the huge old cathedral, candlelit for the occasion. And then to top it off, I went to Sandinos (a fabulous pub and concert venue) for Steve Riley and the Mamou Playboys, a cajin band out of Louisianna. Billed as "infectious," and I'd fully agree.

To round out an already excellent weekend, I had an amazing hostess, who cooked delicious food, provided a comfy guestroom and really great conversation. It was tough to come back to Belfast, but I'm re-inspired to find the history, cozy pubs, and good friends here.

And a quick note about this week: we had drumming lessons for our mulitcultural group last night. African drums, Irish drums, marimbas...it was so loud, and great fun.