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.”