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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