It’s almost impossible to imagine the past as you sip a pre-dinner martini outside the window of the Europa Hotel’s first-floor Piano Bar, gazing at locals and tourists milling about for a obligatory pint of Guinness at the Crown Liquor Saloon opposite. .
A past where the same scene is a past of rubble and broken glass rather than a busy, bustling city. It was not cheerful conversations that echoed in the streets, but the wail of sirens.
The Europa, which has just completed a five-year, £15 million refurbishment, was bombed 33 times between 1971 and 1994, competing with Holiday Inns in Sarajevo and Beirut for the title of the world’s most bombed hotel. The windows were broken so many times that they cost local glaziers a fortune; those at the front were almost permanently boarded up.
As a result, it was called the Hardboard Hotel, and rooms at the rear with proper windows cost £10 more per night. Drinks at the top-floor bar were served by Penthouse Poppets, Northern Ireland’s answer to Playboy Bunnies, but journalists tended to congregate in the first-floor Piano Bar.
I was a reporter for the News Letter in Belfast at the time, and although the Piano Bar was frequented mostly by local and international press who stayed in the hotel to report on the Troubles, occasionally we local journalists would pop in too. It was fascinating, but of course it was a terrible time for society.
These were the days before cell phones, so when a bomb went off, everyone would run to the phones in the lobby and tell their stories to the cheaters. Our joke was that these stories always started like this: “Hello, copy? Ready? That’s right, cue this Belfast bomb. Yes I know, same as last week. OK, here it goes. ‘As I stand here among the burning rubble… Get the PA.’
The PA is, of course, the Press Association news agency, whose correspondent Deric Henderson is first on the scene of any disaster. He looked so constantly exhausted that we wondered if he had gone home and slept.
On one particular night in Europe, a shortwave radio tuned somewhat illegally to the police frequency came alive with news of a riot on Republican Falls Road, while it was secretly on in the background as usual. Someone went downstairs and called McGlade’s, where the photographers were drinking, and told them to get there immediately. “They’re all drunk,” he said, returning just in time to get another drink, “so they sent the least drunk upstairs.”
After hearing nothing for an hour, he went downstairs to call again and returned with the news that the photographer had taken refuge in the door of a shop and was taking pictures of rioters throwing bricks at the police. Then everything was quiet.
He stuck his head out to see why, fell unconscious, and when he woke up, he saw a frozen salmon lying next to him. Due to the silence and the rebels running out of bricks, they broke the window of the local fishmonger and started throwing various seafood at the police, but the unfortunate photographer was knocked down by the rebel salmon.
We laughed so hard we almost forgot whose tour it was, but at least the photographer had some nice salmon to take home for dinner.
Today, local artist Colin Davidson’s painting of the 71 bus home from school hangs behind the reception, symbolizing the year the hotel first opened in 1971. now includes soft earth tones from dove gray to slate blue to pale marble bathrooms.
He stayed on Europa in 1995 when Bill Clinton became the first US President to visit Northern Ireland. His entourage had booked 110 rooms and security personnel had been there months in advance; He wears sharp suits with mysterious protrusions, talks into his handcuffs, and checks every nook and cranny in sight.
A week before his arrival, all the journalists covering the visit had gathered in one of the conference rooms at Europa for a briefing. Someone stood up at the head of the room and said: “Hello, my name is Don Williams and I am an undercover agent.” “Well, you’re not anymore, are you?” said a voice from behind.
So there were laughs as well as bombs there, but the last one went to Sir Billy Hastings, who bought the Europa from Grand Metropolitan Hotels in 1993 and spent £8 million renovating it before reopening the following year.
Billy was a great character who drove a Rolls-Royce with a personalized license plate ending in 1066. I was sitting behind him at the reopening when I noticed his wallet sticking out of his back pocket and then I signaled to him that I was there. He was so eager to grab it. “Geoff, are you kidding? “After everything I spent on this place, there’s nothing in it,” he laughed.
Sadly, Billy is no longer with us, having died in 2017, but his son Howard oversaw the hotel’s latest refurbishment, bringing tastefully refurbished bedrooms and an air of understated elegance overall.
Billy would approve, and as I sit here in the Piano Bar, looking out at the happy, thriving landscape below, I raise my glass to him before going down to dinner, then going to bed in a room with real windows.
Geoff Hill traveled as a guest of the Europa Hotel (028 9027 1066; hastingshotels.com/europa-belfast), offering pairs from £160.