IrishBerlin.com

BAKING: One of Germany’s last great culinary secrets is slowly leaking out to Irish foodies, writes Derek Scally

ASK A GERMAN WHAT they miss most about home and the answer is always the same: their daily bread. German bread runs the gamut from moist, nutty Vollkorn to the dark, chewy Pumpernickel. With more than 300 varieties to choose from, you could enjoy a different kind of bread for almost every day of the year.

With that kind of choice, it’s little wonder the average German polishes off their own weight or more in bread each year, around 90kg per head.

Little is known about Germany’s centuries-old tradition of crusty goodness beyond its borders.But, like German Christmas markets and German wine, Germany’s last great secret is slowly leaking out to Irish foodies.

Small wonder: we may pride ourselves on our baking tradition, but after our batch loaf, brown soda bread and white soda bread with raisins, the list of traditional Irish bread crumbles to a halt.

For decades, the average Irish family has been stuffing themselves with what could best be described as an industrially produced bread substitute. One prominent Irish baker describes his colleagues in the trade as “not bakers but industrial engineers”.

But around the country, young food lovers are turning their backs on the bake mix and chemical “improver” and setting up their own bakeries. The National Bakery School, founded in 1935 and now part of the DIT, runs highly popular courses in bread and cake baking: for the current autumn courses, it received 600 applications for 200 places.

Leading the fightback against mediocre bread in Ireland is the head of the bakery school, Derek O’Brien. “We’re very unfortunate in Ireland because of our historical association with the British, who make the worst bread in the world,” he says.

Our early adoption of the supermarket, combined with rising city centre rents added to the pressures, he says, made it impossible for small- and medium-sized bakeries to survive.

“Irish people don’t know good bread because of what we’ve been eating since mid-1960s, and because we’ve become used to it.”

Bread has always been part of O’Brien’s life: after growing up in a family of bakers, he studied baking in Britain and Germany and now even has his own micro-bakery in his back garden.

As well as running classes in Dublin, the school sends 25 Irish students several times a year for intensive courses at a master bakery school near Heidelberg in southern Germany.

The contrast between Germany and Ireland is stark: while there are around 22,000 bakeries in Germany, around 47 per 100,000 population, Ireland has just 7 per 100,000.

The German bakeries range in size from small family-run outlets with the shop in the front and the bake house out back, to industrial bakers delivering to supermarkets.

What they share, and what Ireland lacks, are strict quality controls from the German bakers’ federation. Bakers go through strict training to earn their Meisterbrief or master craftsman diploma. Only then can they call their premises a bakery.

But, as in France and Italy, German bakeries have come under attack in recent years from “bake shops”, chain stores that take deliveries of frozen dough and heat it up with in-store ovens.

The chains launched a vicious price war and drove many traditional bakers out of business, after a lifetime of getting up at 3am to serve their customers.

But now, after years of decline, there are signs that the traditional bakeries are making a comeback. One of the younger generation is Peter Klann, owner and master-baker of the Soluna food store in Berlin.

The store, in the Kreuzberg neighbourhood, has become a place of pilgrimage where visitors are greeted with the foodies’ equivalent of incense: warm air carrying the smell of heated flour and baking bread.

Like all good bakers, Klann is passionate about his trade. His philosophy: after decades of industrial production, people are looking once more for authentic food experiences.

“For me, baking bread is alchemy: earth, fire and air,” he says. “Others play guitar or paint. With me, it’s the alchemy of food. I don’t want to just bake bread, I’m making art.”

A taste of the breads on offer shows that he isn’t kidding. Unlike Irish wheat-based breads, many of the most popular breads here are hearty rye-based varieties, baked with Sauerteig or sour-dough.

This distinctive dough is made with special wild yeast that produces lactic acid, giving the bread its distinctive sour taste.

Klann shuns chemical catalysts now prevalent in the industry and produces his sourdough the old-fashioned way, leaving it to rise for 24 hours before sliding it into the clay oven.

The true sign of quality in Klann’s breads is, as with all real German breads, they need time to mature after baking, and often taste much better a week after they have left the oven. That has helped him set up a thriving mail-order business for homesick Germans around Europe.

Like many of Germany’s new generation of bakers, he decided to go the slow-food route after becoming convinced that the very industrial production meant to save the industry in an era of rising costs, was actually turning people off bread.

“The mistake most bakers make is that they take the soul from the bread,” says Klann. “When you do that, people notice it and you can’t be too surprised when the bread is no longer in the limelight but just a support player, a carpet for cheese or whatever.”

Klann is a man on a mission, a passionate believer in bread. Derek Quinn shares his convictions and says that, even in tighter economic times, Irish people can be turned on to the health benefits of good quality bread.

“We need to educate the public that there is such a thing as good bread,” he says, “but they have to ask for it.”

© 2008 The Irish Times

Many of the Irish investors who spent €1.3bn buying into the German commercial property market in 2007 are now contemplating getting some of that money back.

Some find themselves in a situation where they need money to support their Irish business activities. Others have found their German properties onerous, because they lack knowledge of the local language and tax regulations and don’t have the necessary financial and legal resources to make their assets perform.

Irish property and investment consultants Farrelly & Mitchell (F&M), have reduced by €1m the borrowings of one of its investment funds which bought into a retail centre in Roethenbach in Germany.

F&M managed to take advantage of the credit crunch by offering to repay a loan to the global bank which lent it funds. The global bank was thus able to free up capital and, in turn, F&M’s Alpine Private II fund was able to reduce its borrowings.

The global lender, desperate to increase its liquidity, agreed after lengthy negotiations to waive €1m of the loan principal owed on this €9m mixed-use commercial property in Roethenbach, Bavaria.

They well-received when we sought to move the loan to a local bank. The security of a local asset, combined with the relative resilience of the German economy, meant that the notoriously conservative German banking system was willing to offer loan-to-value ratios and interest margins that the more exuberant Irish and British lenders were giving out 18 months ago.

The difficulty for most Irish investors is that they lack the local knowledge and industry expertise to exploit similar opportunities. If you want to acquire the right building; manage your tenants and leases; implement a successful exit or tax strategy; or access fresh funding from the well-capitalised German banks, then you need English-speaking German-trained professionals working for you.

Local knowledge and understanding of the language are critical in order to carry out meaningful research at the sourcing and acquisition stage. The commercial property markets in major cities such as Hamburg, Berlin, Munich and Leipzig vary, both in terms of investment characteristics and quality. The same prinicples are true when considering investing in two seemingly identical city blocks within any major city.

The language barrier will not be a big problem initially, and investors will find that German property agents, lawyers and bankers speak excellent English. However, when it comes down to the hard bargaining - over loan-to-value ratios, covenants and the finer details of leases — the discussions will inevitably lapse into German.

Contracts

This disadvantage is compounded by the fact that Germany has a different legal and leasing system. A lawyer will only examine contracts from a legal perspective, to ensure that there are no material defects. They will not examine them from an asset management or commercial perspective, to ensure that they conform to the industry norm, particularly in the area of landlord’s responsibilities and recoverable expenses.

It is only after investors have gone through the stress and excitement of acquiring a property that the real work starts, in terms of sound and proactive asset management.

We have found that German-based and international property management companies don’t really want mid-market business. These companies have a business model that is usually based on managing assets worth more than €20m and consider anything less to be a nuisance. This is one of the main reasons why we are setting up our own asset management office in Berlin, to service the entire German market.

Overall, Germany is still an excellent market. This was proven spectacularly only two weeks ago when an Irish investment firm sold the Zeilgalerie shopping centre in Frankfurt, generating a 70pc return for investors after only 18 months.

Investors who wish to stay in this market can take advantage of the credit crunch by boosting their liquidity. In ‘The Pope’s Children’, David McWilliams pointed out that while Ireland is a nation of optimistic young borrowers, the older German population has saved throughout the country’s economic downturn. As a result, German banks are well-capitalised relative to British and Irish banks.

Marco Henke is the Head of Asset Management at Farrelly & Mitchell. Prior to joining Farrelly & Mitchell, he managed a number of closed-end property funds in Germany

- Marco Henke

Last stand of Berlin’s bohemians

The fight between developers and the defenders of a counterculture landmark is coming to a head.

Khaled Kenawi leans out of the window and surveys the battered concrete, the graffiti-daubed walls, the peeling posters and the teenagers lounging on the ripped-up sofas surrounded by beer bottles. ‘Shutting down all this would be a huge loss,’ he says. ‘There is a difference between the art market and art, and we are that difference.’

For Kenawi is not talking about a depressed housing estate in some grim former East German suburb but Tacheles, the squatted artists’ centre in Berlin’s increasingly chic Mitte district, visited by hundreds of thousands of tourists each year. Tacheles may now be living its last weeks, threatened with closure or, at the very least, radical transformation if the property developer Fundus Group has its way. ‘We will fight,’ said AR Adler, one of the artists working at Tacheles. ‘This is the last place left where you are free to be an artist.’

For nearly 20 years Tacheles - the name is derived from the word for frank speaking in Yiddish - has been one of the key locations for contemporary art and the countercultural scene in Berlin. A home to squatters during the anarchic years after the fall of the Berlin Wall - ‘everything was possible back then,’ says Kenawi, 49 - it has traced the city’s own path through scruffy, lively, post-communist chic through to the tamer Berlin of today. Recently rock musicians such as Peaches have joined the artists in recording studios at the site. Donatella Versace used work by one of the Tacheles artists in a recent collection. ‘It’s like the New York scene in the Sixties,’ said Amy Freed, 19, an American tourist.

Freed may be one of the last few through the poster-plastered doors. A decade ago the Berlin city council sold the land and building to developers who hope to turn it into luxury flats, an exclusive hotel and shops, while keeping some ill-defined ‘cultural’ role. The plan allowed the artists to pay a token annual rent of 40p to stay on the site, but it will expire at the end of the year.

Thomas Schingnitz, who is overseeing the venture, promised that Tacheles will remain ‘a cultural institution’, but the artists fear they will suffer the fate of other former squats in Berlin that have ended up as sanitised shopping malls with a few token art galleries. If the plan goes ahead, it is almost certain that they will be evicted. So they have been rallying allies. ‘We have 20,000 signatures and support from around the world,’ said Linda Cerna, of the co-operative association that runs Tacheles.

But backing has not been forthcoming from the city’s left-wing council, which cut off public subsidies to the centre in 2002 on the basis that it was insufficiently ‘cutting-edge’. ‘If it is shut down, well, that’s life,’ said a spokesman for the Berlin Municipal Authority’s cultural committee. ‘Tacheles used to be a very exciting place with major cultural importance, but it isn’t any more. Berlin’s trademark is that the exciting places come and go. So what if Tacheles is in all the guidebooks? The guidebooks will have to be rewritten.’

Other famous squats in the city have also been under pressure. In the trailer park next to the ‘Köpi’ squat on Köpenicker Strasse, Kondek and his friends sat drinking. ‘It will end one day,’ said 29-year-old Kondek, who has lived in a caravan in the squat for five years when he is not travelling in Europe. ‘The establishment don’t like the way we think.’

Press reports in Germany have focused on the legal battles between the founders, squatters and artists. Few have much to do with the idealistic principles with which the squat was founded and instead largely focus on money. Many pit the co-operative association running Tacheles against the owner of the ground-floor Zapata bar, originally created to fund the artists’ work. ‘The idea was why bother spending our cash on beer in the bars outside when we could have our own bar and make money to allow us all to create, free from the constraints of the market,’ said Kenawi.

But the Zapata bar has not paid rent or water charges to the Tacheles association for years. ‘I do not want to support a capitalist dictatorship,’ the bar’s managing director Ludwig Eben said. ‘I stopped paying rent when I understood I wasn’t welcome.’ There are also a host of property disputes with cafés that have been set up on land around the site which use Tacheles’s utilities without paying.

Kenawi denied that the Tacheles association was ‘commercialised’. He said: ‘We just try to do things as efficiently as possible to save money. We have exhibitions, 30 artists paying minimal rent, a long waiting list for studios, a theatre. Show me where we have sold out.’

The battle for Tacheles’s future is coming to a climax. The artists are putting forward their own plan for development, which includes revamping the Zapata, starting a Tacheles foundation, the formation of a limited company and the creation of a sculpture garden on the roof. The developers say they have yet to see the document, although Tacheles insists it has been sent. The artists hope that the developers will run out of money, and say that they are ‘optimistic’.

There is a sense, however, that any transformation of Tacheles will reflect the changes in Berlin. Though the city remains one of the most interesting artistic and creative centres in Europe, it is becoming more mainstream every year. Formerly bohemian districts are swiftly becoming gentrified.

All, however, is not yet lost, locals say. ‘Berlin is changing fast, but creative people can still find a place,’ said Stefan Rother, a well-known photographer who has documented the evolution of the city for 20 years. ‘At least for the moment.’

Once it was the Germans who snapped up property in Kerry, but, now the Irish can do the same in the old East German capital, writes Donal Buckley

Irish property investors are being enticed to play a new role in the unification of Germany. Despite the impression that unification took place overnight, with the collapse of the Berlin Wall, many Berliners in the former communist east have yet to readjust to the property owning culture of the west of their country.

Although in terms of politics, easterners may have switched to conservatives such as Chancellor Angel Merkel and the CDU, in terms of owning their own homes, former East Germans, including many with middle class jobs, have proven much slower to accept Western beliefs about the joys of owning their own homes, not to mention those of other people’s. Currently less than 20pc of Berliners own their own home, with the majority of accommodation stock still in state hands.

Which is where Irish people come in. They are being enticed to buy some of these homes from the Berlin local authorities. No doubt there are many Kerry people who will recognise the irony in this.

Back in the 1960s and 1970s numerous West Germans and their companies were snapping up sites and land in The Kingdom for their holiday homes and hotel developments.

Not that Berlin local authorities are relying on Irish investors alone to spark a property revolution in that city. Also being enticed are Germans, as well, of course, as the equally hungry UK buy-to-let investors. The prospect of prices from around €35,000 and yields of up to 5.8pc look extremely attractive.

However, there are risks to the market, as the company which is specialising in this privatisation process warns. Michael Hahn, joint managing director of Statdtkonzept, points out that because of Berlin’s urban sprawl, within the 12 main districts the property market experiences what are called microspots.

For Dubliners a microspot is almost like the difference between buying in Sherriff St or the IFSC, except in Berlin the difference may not always be as noticeable in terms of the age or the appearance of the buildings, especially when it comes to selecting the keenly priced apartments.

Silke Lorenz, joint managing director of Statdtkonzept, says that this is all the more reason why investors need to be careful to work through a recognised agent such as themselves who also provide a complete turnkey service to both German nationals as well as to overseas buyers.

They specialise in working with the local authorities to bring refurbished apartments which will appeal to family tenants who are likely to care for their homes. Silke Lorenz, points out that Berlin’s Marzahn Hellesrsdorf area is a very good place to invest in these types of apartments because of the area’s proximity to the new Berlin Brandenburg International airport which is expected to generate employment for up to 60,000 people.

Currently apartments in the area are selling for between €980 and €1,030 per sq m or about €70,000 for a 70 sq m unit. Rents average €4.78 per sq m monthly. Buying costs, including stamp duty and legal fees, will add an extra 7pc to the price. In addition the company charges €42 per month to cover common property management as well as individual property management.

The net rent averages €4.80 per sq m. per month which works out at an annual yield of 5.4pc.

Hahn is also upfront about the rent and investment returns. “This is not a get-rich-quick type of investment,” he advises. “It may take up to 10 years for people to achieve a significant capital gain on their investment,” he adds.

To attract landlords Statdtkonzept is selling many of these apartments with sitting tenants with a proven reliable track record and some properties are offered with an optional ten-year rental income guarantee.

As tourism and other investments boost accommodation demand, Berlin rents are expected to rise. This together with the flow of overseas buy-to-let investment, is already encouraging greater interest in home ownership.

For Irish people who remember the red carpets which the IDA used to roll out for German industries here, it seems ironic that their capital is now seeking to attract investment from little old Ireland.

For more information go to: overseashomesearch.co.uk.
Need to know

LEGAL: Germany is the land of paperwork. There is no place in the world that is so complicated for financing and nowhere else is it harder to get financed.

FINANCE: Non-Germans may borrow a maximum of 60pc of the value of the property. Tenants have very secure leases.

PLACES TO AVOID: The East side of Berlin is not be the ideal district for someone seeking a long-term tenant because of its high unemployment and social deprivation. While some of these areas offer prospects of a high return there is also a higher risk involved.

Safer investment is more likely in the North and South of Berlin in districts not affected by the fall of the Wall.

Getting there: Flights to Berlin are available from Belfast, Cork, Dublin and Shannon Airports and the airlines include both Aer Lingus and Ryanair.

Lisney, together with its German partner Kemper’s, have advised Ballymore Properties on the acquisition of a large retail site in Berlin for €155 million.

The retail site, which is known as the Kudamm-Karree, is situated in Germany’s prime retail district Kurfuerstendamm in the centre of Berlin. This site comprises not only retail and offices, but also some residential accommodation and a theatre. It currently has a lettable area of 63,000sq.m.

Ballymore Properties have plans to spend €450million re-developing this two-hectare site. Mike De Mug, Ballymore’s group retail director, said the site the company has acquired “Is one of the best in Berlin. It is an existing retail arcade with two office towers over it, one of which is a landmark building”. Mr Mulryan, Ballymore’s chairman and chief executive, commented “We plan to further develop and enhance the Kudamm-Karee to make it an appealing destination for Berliners and visitors alike”.

The advisors on this project Lisney is Ireland’s largest privately owned property consultancy firm and an independently owned and operated member of the Cushman & Wakefield Alliance. Lisney has enjoyed sustained growth in continental Europe and are recognised as the market leader in Ireland for German commercial investments. Lisney research suggests commercial property investments in Germany by Irish investors totalled €1.4 billion in 2006. Lisney has transacted properties valued at over €700 million on behalf of Irish investors in Germany and has currently another €280 million in the due diligence process. Lisney has three German professionals based in Dublin focussing full-time on the German property market.

Source: Lisney / Irish Times

Conor Creighton goes in search of the Irish musicians who left Ireland looking for inspiration and found it in Europe’s most bohemian city.

It’s when you look down at your watch and see that all of a sudden it’s six in the morning and no one looks like leaving the bar anytime soon that it dawns on you how very, very different Berlin is to Dublin. And when you look around the room and see the kids dancing in the corner haven’t been to bed in three days and the reasonable looking guy beside you is actually in a pair of pink heels, that you realise Berlin is very, very different to anywhere else in the whole world.

Almost 20 years since the Wall came down and Berlin was united and absorbed into the new Germany, the rebellious attitude that led to that monumental event hasn’t died. Bars stay open as long as they like, drugs are practically legalised and there are so many nuts, eccentrics and bohemian characters roaming the streets that weaker people can develop whiplash from the double-takes.

Berlin is at the cutting edge of the international art scene. One in 20 citizens are full-time musicians or artists. One in 15 are unemployed, and less than 8pc of the whole city actually own the apartment they live in.

These are the folks that mortgage and pension advertising campaigns fail to reach. It’s not about getting rich in Berlin; it’s about just getting by. If you’re working full-time then you’ve screwed up somehow. Berlin is a city populated by dreamers and wasters and apart from the postmen and train drivers, no one seems to have a proper job. The truth is, you don’t really need one.

“I work two shifts a week in a restaurant and that covers my rent and food for the month,” says Simon Milligan. Simon’s from Belfast and makes hip-hop. He DJed all over Ireland and worked at a record shop in George’s Street Arcade. By chance, he came to Berlin to help a friend move three years ago. After two days in the city, Simon decided to stay. He paid one month’s rent and a deposit on a place and was left with €7.50 to survive.

“I’ve been in that position about six or seven times since I came here,” he says, “but a job always comes along at the last minute.”

Rent in Berlin is the lowest of any Western European capital. If you’re fussy you can pay about €400 and get an apartment all to yourself. If you’re not, you can find a room for less than €150 a month, and if that’s still too much there are squats in Berlin that are cleaner than most bedsits you’ll find in Rathmines. Food in Berlin is also incredibly cheap. Most restaurants cater for the young, poor population, some of them even have a pay-what-you-think-the-meal-was-worth policy, and if I get started on how cheap alcohol and cigarettes are, you’ll weep all over this newspaper.

Nina Hynes is another Irish musician based in Berlin. She came over a year ago, got pregnant on her first night and taking that as a sign, moved here permanently. “I came for the kebabs,” she jokes. Food is important to Nina, especially since music has taken a backseat to motherhood for her.

“I haven’t been away from her for more than five minutes since she was born,” she says. “Berlin allows you to do that. If I was in Dublin I’d have to work more and she’d be in a creche.”

She’s dabbling with new ideas. One is a collection of songs she wants to record on an old organ she found. No other instruments, just the organ. Nina can do that sort of thing. She could record an album of ringtones or house alarms and still make it sound beautiful.

Nina has no plans to return to Ireland soon. “If I had a huge house by the sea with a big studio, yeah,” she says. Unfortunately, Bono already called dibs on that lifestyle in Ireland; for ordinary musicians it’s impossible.

In Berlin, the opportunities are immense. Nina’s boyfriend had a studio in an abandoned DDR radio station in the east of the city. It’s a gigantic building on the edge of a lake, surrounded by wild forests and meadows. A little over a quarter-of-a-century ago, the building was producing pro-Communist propaganda, now it’s producing Humanzi and The Things’ albums.

The government throws out incentive after incentive. You can occupy a derelict building and turn it into a gallery or a bar and the government will not only help you with the restoration fees, but they’ll let you stay there rent-free. But no economic miracle was ever conceived from shifting a few canvases and the city’s in debt to the tune of €100bn.

Richie Egan came here a year ago. He’d already one album in Ireland and was enjoying a reasonable musical career. Richie dismisses what he does as just “pop”, but it’s very much art, captured over three-and-a-half minutes. He’s on album number three at the moment and he’s planning to record it in Berlin.

“I think the only reason to record in Ireland would be to work with other Irish artists based there,” he says, “but here is so much cheaper.”

“There’s a magic here,” says Nina Hynes. “I think I judge myself less harshly here. I’m much more free.”

Simon feels the magic, too. The first one-and-a-half years I was here I kept getting goose bumps,” he says. “The city gives you a confidence. Everything is so positive here. You can’t live this life in Dublin. It’s too expensive. You have to work too much. I see what it’s doing to my friends and I want to grab them and bring them over.”

Another plus Berlin has going for it is the number of gigs you can get as a musician. Everywhere’s a venue. There may be licensing and insurance laws in Berlin just like Ireland’s but you’d never think it. Berliners may be sticklers when it comes to jaywalking but they don’t think twice about ignoring health and safety or smoking laws. You can go to a venue where there are maybe 400 people, no toilets and one rickety staircase as entrance and exit.

Berliners don’t complain about noise. Back when the Wall was in place the inhabitants of the West Berlin borough of Kreuzberg pointed speakers towards Friedrichshain in East Berlin as a gesture of solidarity. In Berlin, playing loud music is not a nuisance; it’s a right.

Nina, Simon and Richie all speak a little

German, but one in four people in Berlin are not German; some areas of the city have become so mixed that there is more English spoken than there is German.

Richie has no plans to return to Ireland in the near future. He’s from Limerick. He jokes that he’s missed the GAA and that the German sense of humour can be a bit of a drag: “Berlin is the perfect place to be an artist,” says Richie and then changes his mind. “Maybe don’t say that, or they’ll all start coming.”

WHY BERLIN & GERMANY
Population: Circa 3.4 Million
Size: Circa 890 Square Kilometres
Of which 12% Recreation
18% Forest
7% Lakes & Waterways
Remainder Residentail/Commercial

Berlin is

- The most densley populated city of Germany
- After London the 2nd biggest in Europe
- Since 1990 the capital of Germany
- Since 1999 the seat for the parliament
- Central in Germany

Headquarters for large National & International firms such as Sony, Hitchi, Coca Cola, Siemens, Daimler Chrysler, BMW, Schering, Gillette, Samsung……
City with most newspapers in Europe
Media Headquarter for 7 major TV channels in Germany
Music capital with Universal Music, Sony, BMG and MTV
One of the cheapest capital cities for residential/commercial property in Europe

Purchase Transactions:
Unlike in Ireland estate agents fees are paid by the purchaser in Germany. Fees vary from 3 to 6% payable. Between stamp duty, notary and registration fees, auctioneers fees an additional 10% need to be added to all property prices quoted. Notaries in Germnay handle purchase transfers. Schiller & Schiller can recommend vaires Notaries as well as Irish solicitors which are familiar with German law to check all pruchase transactions for a client.

German Banks will finance property bought by non-nationals. On average this can be between 40 to 50% of purchase price depending on property bought. There are tax breaks available on property bought that is classified as a listed building. Otherwise net income from rental is taxable at 20% in Germany.

Almost 20 years after reunification, Berlin’s bohemian lifestyle is attracting overseas buyers. Just don’t expect a quick profit

Berlin is a new city; the newest I have ever seen,” Mark Twain remarked in 1891. He might well say the same today. Nearly two decades after reunification, the German capital’s landscape continues to be redrawn. The division between east and west that once defined the city is now barely noticeable - just a few desultory chunks of the Wall remain - and the city is thriving as a hotbed of modern, experimental architecture. With a unique combination of cold-war history and a reputation for hedonism, Berlin is bang on the zeitgeist: Matt Damon, Angelina Jolie and Sam Riley are among those who have been seduced into buying homes in and around the city.
(more…)

As of March 2007 the following are the direct flights from Ireland to Berlin:

Aer Lingus : Cork (ORK) - Berlin (SXF)
Aer Lingus : Dublin (DUB) - Berlin (SXF)
Lufthansa : Dublin (DUB) - Berlin (TXL)
Ryanair : Dublin (DUB) - Berlin (SXF)
Ryanair : Shannon (SNN) - Berlin (SXF)

This is what a toilet door looks like in Berlin. I love it! This particular door is in the once squat now tourist trap, the Tacheles.