This entry has been brought to you by….

Multiple spankings from Lindsey, Joey and Roisín. So thanks for the motivation, ladies.

Weekends of late have been a write-off. Between nights out drinking and recovering the next day, we don’t leave the house much for anything else. Last weekend was shit; I was sick and coughing my guts out. Catherine slowly succumbed as well, so what was designed to be a buffer weekend between Berlin and work became Catherine and Joe’s Weekend of Sweat. And not in a good way either; marriage consummation has taken a back seat to my new favourite hobby, coughing. I do love the taste of Benilyn though, which is a tiny upside.

Anyway, I’m pretty much over it now. Work is quiet and boring, so staying away another day made no difference whatsoever. Berlin was great fun. I’ve wanted to go to European capitals in a whirlwind type manner for a while, but there’s always been something up. We want to enjoy being part of a DINKy marriage; double income, no kids; for as long as we can – some day, a little Catherina or Josephina could come along and take all of this from us. And we would resent them and the bags they give my eyes and the cellulite they give their mother. So in the meantime, trips like that one to Berlin are the order of the day.

We flew from Cork as the flights from Dublin were booked out. The Cork-Berlin flight was full – on a Sunday morning. Wtf?? Anyway, we got to Schonefeld airport, where I made my first mistake – don’t take a taxi to Hardenbergstrasse or anywhere else central – it’s crazy-expensive. Like Ireland expensive. Including a tip, we paid €40 – the train, which you get to Ostkreuz and change for the Zoo after that, is a mere €2.80 each. However, Catherine did point out that we were knackered and hauling suitcases from train to train in east Berlin would’ve probably been a headwrecker. We’d driven down to Cork from Aidan and Becky’s Irish reception (for those who couldn’t make it to Florida) and were up 24 hours at that stage. Incidentally, Cork is remarkably easy to get to with this new motorway almost finished. Ireland’s only getting motorways on any large scale these days and most will open next year and honestly, they’ll change the country so much and yet no-one seems bothered. I think they should make a documentary or something.

Anyway, we arrived at our hotel in Berlin and collapsed into bed for 4 hours or so. When we got up, we went down to a Christmas market near the hotel and had some eierpunsch (egg-punch, eww) and champignons (mushrooms) and bratwurst (sausage) and pilsner (beer). And kept it all down. We also had a few steins of beer, litre glasses. You can’t get 500ml of anything; it’s just the girly 400ml glass or the full litre glass you can fit your fist in. So that was nice.

The next morning, we went on a walking tour with a guy from Glasgow called Kenny. There’s Glasweigan and then there’s this guy, although it’s funny, I think we re-tuned our brains or something to his accent because as impenetrable as it was, it was broadly intelligible after 30 minutes. It was a 4 hour tour, which took us to east Berlin for the most part (the east was really the proper city, the big boulevards, palaces and memorials are all there). Berlin is a fairly amazing place; it grew from very little, was a kind of 18th century New York where minorities fled to escape persecution, the 19th century saw it become a national capital and the 20th century saw it unleash hell on Europe, followed by division, entrenchment, unity, renewal and currywurst. The Wall fascinates me; I’d give anything to have visited Berlin before it fell. East Germany is mesmerising to me; a paranoid, all-controlling police state in the heart of Europe, lasting all the way to the 1980s. Thankfully, it seems so unthinkable now. The Checkpoint Charlie museum was something else – Checkpoint Charlie itself was even more extraordinary. And now it’s all gone and they can’t build over the old “death strip” quick enough. Part of me thinks it should be preserved; but then why live in the past. Where Checkpoint Charlie was is now a busy but unremarkable crossroads, rather than the place where World War 3 would’ve started. And why shouldn’t it be?

We met some friends of Aidan & Becky’s that we’d met in Florida and live in Berlin. They’re from Ireland and moved there on a whim a few years ago with no German between them. They love it and don’t plan to come home anytime soon. It’s a nice pace of life; Germany seems to be well-run, going out is nice and understated, there’s plenty of culture and things to do. I didn’t get that “oh Jesus I’d love to go home today” feeling that I usually get. We got a bit tipsy of gluhwein (mulled wine) at a Christmas market near Alexanderplatz and then really drunk at a cafe bar-type place nearby. Then we went on the underground (the U-Bahn) without a ticket because that’s what they did and they’re locals, don’tcha know. And we went to our hotel and they had work the next day. Ewww.

We had some very intense conversations, one that’s been repeated since with other Irish people, about the Murphy report. This report was produced after a series of public inquiries into sexual abuse in the Dublin archdiocese of the Catholic Church. It’s one thing for Ireland to be repeatedly kicked in the nuts financially (we’re borrowing €400m a week just to keep things going), but our previously-loved church continues to amaze and astound with the extent of its moral bankruptcy. It’s safe to say they’re up shit creek right now and many of us, Catherine and I included, no longer consider ourselves Catholics after what’s happened. It’s a giant paedophile ring and the church’s modus operandi, to use their beloved Latin, was fundamentally covering up anything and everything that would reflect badly on them. And I hope that one day, very soon, they’re selling churches and property to pay for all of the legal bills. Because hoping that the government would simply take it all off them is asking too much, even still.

It’s all too much to take in anymore. I keep seeing Ireland as the Battlestar Galactica, particularly at the end of season 4, when it took hit after hit but stayed the course. Our country is a groaning, battered shadow of its former self but we’ll turn it around and some day soon (probably around the Olympics in London), we’ll see a turnaround. The axe is swinging over so many things here, but there’s a tenacity about people these days, gallows humour or something, and a feeling that if we haven’t gone the way of Iceland by now, there must be some hope for us.

If there isn’t, we could always do what they did with the Battlestar Galactica. Fly it into the sun and start again. Who’s with me?