And this is why I ❤️ NI… (from the perspective of someone who moved from the big city to the big sea)
It was 7PM, but the July sun was still alert in the sky. I leant against the floor-to-ceiling window overlooking East London, touching the warm horizon with my gaze. For the first time in months, I was still in the office not because of endless work, but because what was happening on the phone was too important for me to make a move. And too good to be true, I thought to myself.
My partner, calling from Northern Ireland, was informing me that our offer on a cute little terraced house, located in an affluent neighbourhood on the outskirts of Belfast, got accepted. We were going to be first-time buyers and the proud owners of a house that was just perfect for us.
One month later, I moved to Northern Ireland with only 2 suitcases, mainly full of clothes that I would barely wear over the next 2 years. Sounds like an irrelevant point? Bear with me for the next couple of paragraphs and I’ll explain how this is actually relevant.
At that point in time, I had been to Northern Ireland only 5 or 6 times before. Way too little to actually move there and buy a house, some would say. But here’s the thing: it was one of those occasions when I knew I had to trust my intuition. Plus the stats that showed how the property market in NI was on the rise. Plus… the maths behind the calculations of what our combined income was, compared to the realistic rates at which we were saving and the property prices in NI compared to other places in the UK. To put it in plain English, we couldn’t have afforded that particular house anywhere else: built in the 1930s, requiring some modernisation work that we actually craved in order to satisfy our shared interest in interior design, within a ridiculously short walking distance from a train station served by regular trains that would take us into the heart of a capital city in less than 15 minute, in the middle of a quiet, leafy and overall gorgeous neighbourhood guarding the Belfast Lough from its vantage point, placed between ancient hills and a motorway that would provide easy access to Belfast, the coast of Northern Ireland and even Dublin.
The combination between the breathtaking natural beauty and the convenient, modern infrastructure was, and it still is, even after 2 years of living here, overwhelming, especially since I come from another astoundingly beautiful country, situated at the other end of Europe, that sadly lacks the infrastructure — a country which, ironically, was also affected by very slow economic progress brought on not by 40-something years of “troubles,” but by 40-something years of Communist regime. But that’s a story for another time.
Over the last three years spent in Northern Ireland, I’ve seen a lot of progress that fills me with so much pride and joy: full new neighbourhoods getting built from scratch, green spaces getting cleaned and made appealing to even the fussiest tourists, substantial parts of Belfast getting gentrified, luxury apartments getting built and sold in no time, lavishing hotels, fine-dining restaurants and oh-so-Instagrammable coffee shops opening all over Belfast, and most importantly, office buildings… well, everywhere. I’ve seen all this with my own eyes and I’ve been amazed, but hearing my boyfriend say things like: “This street was abandoned 10 years ago; all the buildings used to be bordered up” while walking down a sleek street lined with imposing buildings now hosting a miniature Silicon Valley, makes me speechless and even emotional. Because seeing history — and this time, good history — being made in a country that truly deserves the best is a beautiful feeling, a feeling that restores my faith in humanity, civilisation, evolution and productivity.
But it’s the overall honesty of this place that made me fall in love with Northern Ireland. The honesty of the people, of the edginess of this place, a place that for too many years got defined by conflict and violence, of the rugged nature that the creators of Game of Thrones chose as one of the main backgrounds for a story that could have only been visually told in a magical corner of the Earth like this, of the green hills that roll and roll until they spill into the sea, of the ease with which life is lived here. My levels of stress have decreased substantially since I moved out of London. Distances and commutes that would have taken a big chunk of my personal time are now completed in a matter of minutes and dozens of minutes; money that were spent left and right on “necessities” such as bus and tube fares are now spent on more important things such as… flavoursome flat whites and delicious veggie burritos from this fabulous local invention called “Boojum.” And then there’s the clothes. I mentioned above that after moving to NI, I gradually got rid of most of the clothes that I brought with me from London. Why? Well, because they were dishonest. They weren’t representing me, but the London-based-hard-working-millennial stereotype that I was trying to fit. Living in Northern Ireland taught me a valuable lesson in the importance of wearing comfortable, weather-suitable clothes that define who I am — and a lesson in minimalism. I now feel that I am helping the Earth, while helping myself. I previously felt that I barely had any energy or time to help myself, let alone think about the bigger problems of the world.
But the most valuable lesson that Northern Ireland has taught me over the last 3 years is not about saving money and enjoying the economic prosperity of the capital city. It’s about the importance of taking a leap of faith — in my case, from the 13th floor of an office tower in East London (metaphorically speaking). A leap that landed me where I needed to be, without me even knowing it, three years ago: in an honest place, surrounded by honest people and honest nature, where I’m honestly having the best craic of my life… all day, every day, whenever my eyes are open and I just look around me.
