Right across the first page of the travel section of Die Zeit a German weekly newspaper, spreads a picture of a laughing young girl, back to the roaring, wave-topped River Shannon at Thomond Bridge, Limerick. Underneath, a big headline reads "An Irish Childhood", with a second heading "At the Scenes of the famous novel The Ashes of my Mother by Frank McCourt." And we are told that the cover of the German edition asserts that these memories belong to the most dreadful and yet the most beautiful ever written about Ireland and the exceptional qualities of the Irish soul. "And every word of it is true."
The reporter, Reiner Luyken, is concerned primarily to tell the readers what Limerick is like today, which he does well. But he begins, like McCourt, with the rain. The first words in his article are "The rain is still here." It doesn't so much fall as permeate the atmosphere, saturate your hair and clothes, and then he quotes McCourt's words about the hacking coughs and wheezes and running noses of his time. But there are means of alleviation today. And tells us how the lanes of McCourt's day are gone, how Limerick is a modern city of modern buildings, of modern young women with mobile phones chirping in their handbags, of the breakfast-room of the Royal George Hotel where a German businessman is quoting from the Frankfurter Allgemeime newspaper which he bought across the street at 7.45 that morning. The taximan who brought Luyken from the airport gave him a common reaction when he said the Limerick of McCourt never existed. All made up. "But it pleases the Americans. The Germans too. So they want to see us. And preferably in an ass-cart. At first most people were bitter, now we all look to the tourists. Everyone wants to squeeze money out of them."
And Luyken comes across what he calls the Anti-McCourt book "Ashes" which is dedicated, he says, to all who had a happy childhood and don't save up their pennies to go off to the United States.
The slums have moved to the outlying districts, he notes, and he remarks on the style of much new building with anglo-ionic fronts. But everywhere, even in churchyards, litter. Churches at almost every corner. A detailed, graphic article. Maybe look at it again. Should bring Germans in droves.