BERLIN DIARY:FOR VAMPIRES looking for a winter break, Berlin is the place to go. "Sixteen days without sun!" trumpeted a newspaper last week to a collective groan of despair from light-deprived Berliners, writes DEREK SCALLY
Every October, a heavy, low-hanging cloud carpet is rolled out over the Berlin sky. For the next six months, the sun vanishes and a watery grey light drains the cityscape of its colours and sharp edges.
January is when Berliners’ eyes grow especially dark with despair. With the Christmas markets a dim memory, they try to hold on until the film festival next week when they can skive off work – if they even have a job – to sit in a darkened cinema and pretend they’re somewhere else.
For those not lucky enough to get tickets, Berlin’s bookshops provide a welcome refuge from the grey days and wind that can feel like a knife in the face.
While it’s diet books that go on prominent display in Dublin bookshops after Christmas, in Berlin they pile high the happiness books. Many bookshops devote entire tables to these mostly green volumes, plastered with pigs, four-leaf clovers and ladybirds, all supposed bringers of luck.
Amid a worldwide boom in self-help books, Germany is experiencing a run on happiness books. There are two main types. The first are scientific or pseudo-scientific books that appeal to the reader’s inner snob. The authors condense into layman’s language the latest in brain research and then throw in a few jokes. Not too many, mind: happiness in Germany is a serious business.
"We all have the capacity to be happy, but not all of us know it. It's just a matter of training," writes Stefan Klein in his bestseller The Happiness Formula.
The second category are happy-clappy volumes that often come with a free plastic pig or a packet of “good mood” tea.
Change Your Life in 60 Minutesis one example of this second sub-genre that is not to be taken seriously, particularly as the author confesses to the reader after a few pages: "I don't think there is such a thing as quick happiness." Nor does he seem to believe in the sales descriptions act.
Germany’s unchallenged king of happiness hill is the rosy-cheeked Dr Eckhart von Hirschhausen, who penned two of Germany’s top three best-selling non-fiction books last year. He fills theatres around the country with his one-man show that mixes anecdotes, medical advice and groaner humour. Yet on page two of his latest title – currently top of Germany’s non-fiction chart – Dr von Hirschhausen admits: “Happiness books are like diet books: if they worked, the market wouldn’t be full with them.”
Despite undermining the case for the very product he’s pushing, the good doctor has brought out a “happiness box” containing humorous postcards, a mug with tea, a CD, a lucky penny and a “happiness diary” where each page is headed: “Today I felt happy when . . . ” All in a green cardboard box with Dr von Hirschhausen grinning on the lid. At €20 a go, it’s easy to see why.
Not that all Berliners are falling for the happiness hucksters.
“I know people who buy these books and they’re neither the really happy sort nor the utterly despairing sort, but people who feel unsatisfied,” says Berlin-born Else Lenz in a city centre bookshop.
“I see a parallel with the rise of this genre and a fall away from religion.”
But miracles can happen, even in godless Berlin, like on Sunday when the sun put in a welcome appearance.
For a few short hours it seemed as if the entire city had rushed outside for a free dose of vitamin D in the crisp winter air.
In the Kreuzberg neighbourhood, Berliners skidded around on the frozen waters of the city canal, cheerful and laughing – and not one happiness manual in sight.
“The modern idea that someone should be happy all the time is what makes many people unhappy,” says Benjamin, a curly-haired psychology graduate.
“I think the pursuit of happiness propagated in those books is dangerous.”
In the US, the pursuit of happiness is anchored in the declaration of independence. In Germany it dominates the bestseller lists, and this in a country where the word for happiness – Glück– is the same as the word for good fortune.
It opens up two different paths to happiness. Should one decide to be happy and work towards that end, the Anglo-American approach, or wait patiently and hope happiness crosses one’s path, as many Germans seem to feel?
On rare sunny afternoon in a wintry Berlin, the only certainty is that there’s more happiness to be found slip-sliding on a frozen canal than in any pile of green books.