A visit to Berlin, where forethought is to the fore, underlines the malfunctioning nature of the Irish system, writes ANN MARIE HOURIHANE
THERE IS much to be said for a holiday in Berlin. There is always a bit of a thrill about arriving in a capital city and being unable to read the destinations on the buses, because they are written in a foreign language. Yet it is disheartening to arrive at an airport which has never recovered from its demolition; an airport which is a building site, filthy, chaotic and seemingly scarred irrevocably by partition and national failure.
That’s enough about Dublin airport. They manage these things so much better in . . . well, anywhere else really.
The city of Berlin has been bankrupt for years and no one seems too upset about it. Unemployment is running at 20 per cent, although you would not think so from the sight of restaurants and bars crowded with Berliners. “They’re used to it,” said one employed Berliner darkly.
Berlin is a lovely city in which to be a tourist. All the old cliches, which are so tiresome to the reader but so important in reality, apply. Berlin is cheap, friendly and efficient. The beer is excellent. The atmosphere is relaxed and, if not exactly optimistic in the current economic climate, fairly cheerful. It is as if Berlin, with its appalling history, has decided to stay humble. No one makes great claims for it, but it is a pleasant place to be.
It’s not that anyone would argue that post-unification Germany is a perfect society. Those who lived in the old East Germany are not overwhelmed with joy at finding themselves in the capitalist system.
Despite the arrests – and even the murders – the corruption, the Stasi and the fact that residents of the old Communist state had no right to leave it, many of them miss full employment, the social services and the camaraderie of the old regime.
The hole left by the exterminated and exiled Jewish population of Berlin is obvious to the most superficial tourist. The empty synagogues, the busy Jewish museums and memorials are guarded by armed police officers who look too bored to be effective if an emergency did arise. And last Wednesday a teenager from a prosperous German home turned his gun on female students and other innocent victims.
Newspaper sales were brisk in Berlin after this catastrophe, Germany’s second high-school massacre. In this regard as in so many others – its enormous size, its easy order, its confidence – Germany is reminiscent of the United States. To the idle visitor at least, Berlin has more in common with Boston than might have once appeared to be the case to Irish speechwriters.
But Germany has its distinguishing characteristics too. For the foreigner who had stumbled through the city in the early morning in order to catch her plane home, oblivious to the national flags flying at half mast, it was interesting to learn later that the school authorities in south Germany had a system in place to deal with exactly such a horrific eventuality as a high school massacre.
As Tim Kretschmer (17) continued shooting, the director of one of the two schools he had targeted went on the intercom system to announce “Frau Koma is coming”. The pupils did not understand this warning but the teachers did, and locked the doors of their classrooms. Koma is amok spelt backwards. The regional authorities had trained school principals in what to do if a lone gunman started murdering their pupils – yes, it must have been a very strange meeting – and advised each one of them to come up with a code word.
This probably saved people from Tim Kretschmer’s homicidal rage, although obviously not enough. But it is the forethought and the planning which is impressive.
The ability to contemplate the worst eventuality and take steps, no matter how simple, to avoid as much disaster as possible.
It is a frightening thing when, on returning to your native country, you realise that there is only one Irish system in which you have complete confidence, and that is the library system. Not even a librarian would argue that books save lives, although they can make lives that little bit better.
Our libraries have been bankrupt for years, presumably – their budgets were lousy during the boom – yet our librarians are unfailingly professional, interested and helpful. If only they would run our schools and hospitals.
Otherwise we do not seem to have any functioning systems at all, and the relaxed chaos which once made Ireland so charming – at least to some Germans who came here to buy holiday homes on the cheap, and would, as one Clare man pointedly remarked of them, “live in your ear” – now appears less amusing.
We too had our shootings recently. And although they were not as devastating as the other, innumerable killings that the people of Northern Ireland have had to endure – today is the anniversary of Michael Stone’s shootings at Milltown cemetery in 1988, in which three people died – they are still reminders that our society too contains a violence that we cannot control, or really explain.
All of this – and we’re not even using the R word here – makes this St Patrick’s Day one of the strangest of modern times.
Poor St Patrick, he has his hands full at the moment.