THE IRISH IN BERLIN: Is Berlin a capital of creativity, as the hype would have you believe, or rather a slacker’s paradise, where every day is a Saturday? DEREK SCALLY talks to some Irish immigrants who have managed to forge careers there

JOHN LENNON ONCE remarked that life is what happens while you’re busy making other plans. For many Irish, the German capital is a place they never intended to make their home but, to stretch Lennon’s logic, they have found Berlin to be a fine spot to live while making other arrangements.

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Our train passed many parts of the metropolitan area known as Berlin before we arrived at the main station. This introduction laid out in front of us one warning: Berlin is huge. Arriving from the east, our hostel was at the west end of the metro system (conveniently located next to the stop named ‘Westend’). It was a long trek from the center – about 20 minutes by metro – but cheap enough to swallow the minor inconvenience. Berlin is known to be one of the few capitals in Europe in which you can really stretch out each euro. Despite its cheap reputation, we managed to spend a bit more than we had planned.

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A NEW DIRECTION: From the ashes of the second World War, the self-assured German state achieved decades of sustainable economic growth. It’s not too late for Ireland to follow in its footsteps.

IT’S NINE YEARS since Mary Harney remarked that Ireland, though physically closer to Berlin, was spiritually closer to Boston.

What a difference a decade makes. Harney is still hanging on but her political home is gone, the neo-liberal policies of the Progressive Democrats undermined by the financial crisis.

Ireland, after putting its eggs in twin baskets of property speculation and financial services, is now a financial basket case, its eggs thoroughly scrambled.

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Some of the oddest things about Germany are the soundtracks you hear in its hotels. Not for the first time in the past two days, Enola Gay by OMD, Everybody Wants to Rule the World by Tears for Fears, and Guns N’ Roses covering Bob Dylan’s Knockin’ on Heaven’s Door have wafted out of the elevator.

These are songs I have not heard since the 1980s but, then again, there is a very 1980s – or, at least,1990s – feel to Germany. This feeling is most pronounced in Berlin – the capital not only of Germany, but also of the new Europe.

The place seems to have 1990s prices, for a start. We in Ireland should take note of these prices because Germany is, somewhat unexpectedly, the only country to have gone through a period of deflation stemming from its membership of the eurozone. This is unexpected because, 20 years ago, had you suggested that Germany would suffer economically from reunification and membership of a monetary union, many people would have thought you mad. Yet that is exactly what happened.
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Barely a brick remains but in the shadow of the past, inspiration and creativity thrive in Berlin, David Whitley writes.

High on the wall is a cartoonish picture of a cat with its neck in a noose. “This guy doesn’t like cats,” Stu explains. “So he thinks of various ways to kill them. Some of them are really quite inventive but mostly he just hangs them.”

Stu is an Irishman who came to Berlin to work as a financial analyst. He was made redundant when the hedge fund house of cards began to tumble and has since become engrossed in Berlin’s street-art scene. He now earns a living taking visitors around the “alternative” Berlin the squats, the artist communes, the independent galleries and, of course, walls covered in graffiti of varying quality.
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LIVING: WHEN THE DIARY of my first month in Berlin was printed here a few months ago, a sub-editor with a great deal more insight than I possess titled it “Falling for Berlin”. At that point, I was still in denial. “Jeez,” I thought, “it’s not like I’m in love. I’m just here to have a good time. No strings, no commitment, no German grammar,” writes LOUISE EAST

Six months on, I’m in the throes of a full-blown crush and like all newly besotted people, I’m kind of insufferable. On a bad day, I’ll argue that Berlin is woven from a blend of cashmere and unicorn milk known to solve nine out of 10 Middle Eastern crises and eliminate e-mail spam.
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It’s Sunday 3/8 at about 5pm, and I got back from Berlin at about 1 this afternoon. Wow, where to start. Berlin had to be one of the most interesting, beautiful, and eerie places I’ve ever experienced and may ever experience. We left on Friday at about 5am- didn’t get much sleep that night..haven’t slept much since last week for that matter. Anyway, it was my first experience with the budget airline Ryanair and although it’s budget I must say it was one of the easiest, most efficient means of air travel I’ve ever experienced. Both our flights, there and back, left exactly on schedule if not earlier and arrived earlier than scheduled. It has first-come, first-serve seats so if you’re in the end of the line you probably won’t sit with your friends, but we didn’t have a problem and sat together.

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GERMAN PUBLIC broadcaster ZDF treats its viewers on Sunday evenings to a bracing dose of time-warp television called Our Farm in Ireland . It’s the story of Martin Winter, a German doctor and widower who moves to the fictional town of Ballymara with his three daughters. There he eventually falls in love with local girl Erin O’Toole, described by producers as an “attractive shepherdess”. Not much happens and the dialogue is witless, but over six million Germans tune in for the sheer escapist value and the beautiful Irish scenery. In short, Our Farm is the latest incarnation of the idealised Ireland Germans have cherished for decades. In this world view, Ireland is a wild, romantic place closer to “the nature”, as Germans call it, than, say, the Ruhr or Frankfurt.
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LIDL AND ALDI have got so much positive press in Ireland over the last 12 months that you’d swear the two German discounters had set up shop here a decade ago as a charitable gesture intended to save us from the rip-off merchants who had been bleeding Ireland dry for years.

While Tesco, Marks & Spencer, Dunnes Stores and dozens of other retailers have been taking the flak for charging shoppers in the Republic prices which are, by any definition, wildly out of sync with their counterparts across the Border, Lidl and Aldi have neatly sidestepped much of the criticism.
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Bord Scannán na hÉireann/the Irish Film Board will be attending the 59th Berlin Film Festival this year, which runs from February 5th – 15th.

The IFB will be participating in a promotional stand in the European Film Market again this year. They will be sharing a small stand with Film Holland which will used for providing information on Irish films and festivals as well as information on the delegates attending the market.

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