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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