BERLIN DIARY:THE EURO zone crisis has breathed new life into Europe's rich collection of national cliches, foremost among which is German efficiency.
Even before Ireland’s bailout last year, whispers spread that pitilessly efficient Germans had begun budgetary bean-counting on Merrion Street.
Admired and feared in equal measure, German efficiency is, critics imply, an alien, Protestant encroachment on our Catholic-influenced individual and national freedoms.
Defining efficiency as “the greatest possible effect with the least possible means” would be fine, say, in an Ikea catalogue. But is it any more suspect for originating, as it just so happens, with Bauhaus designer Walter Gropius? German efficiency, it seems, is fine once it’s confined to Germany, a country viewed by Irish visitors as a well-oiled, orderly wonderland that effortlessly turns out cars, autobahns and airports. The steel and glass marvel that is Berlin’s central train station once reduced an Irish engineering friend of mine to tears.
The curious thing is how German efficiency frequently dissolves in domestic practice. Ask any foreigner living in Germany and prepare to be regaled with tales of mind-numbing inefficiency and fist-biting inflexibility.
Yesterday, for instance, a short-circuit halted the entire 330km S-Bahn rail network for two hours, stranding passengers in tunnels or on wintry platforms. With no information available (sound familiar?), passengers began calling around or checking the internet, causing a meltdown in both Berlin’s mobile phone network and the S-Bahn website.
Journalists who got on the case were told that the entire S-Bahn press office was on a pre-Christmas outing.
It’s not just German infrastructure: German construction leaves a lot to be desired too. Berlin’s sprawling government quarter, built ahead of the 1999 move from Bonn, is a vast, jerry-built money pit. The €250 million chancellery is a mess of cracked walls and sagging floors.
Chancellor Angela Merkel has had to vacate her office twice in the last three years to let the builders in.
The Reichstag dome opposite is Berlin’s leakiest tourist attraction, a section of the foreign ministry roof has collapsed, while the drooping ceiling of an MP office block shattered several windows.
Even the impressive central station is not all it seems. To open on time for the 2006 World Cup, the builders shortened the curved glass roof by 110 metres and put the redundant roof panels in storage. A year after opening a two-tonne girder came crashing from the roof.
The best application of German efficiency in Germany is in documenting Germany’s inefficiency. Every year the Taxpayer Federation documents the hair-raising waste of public money: like the federal government’s online platform for internships that cost €3 million and placed exactly 18 people.
Or the western city of Koblenz, host of next year’s national flower show, which built a new train station to cope with the anticipated flood of flower lovers. Located just 800 metres from the existing main station, the building has cost the city €17 million, almost double the original estimate.
In pole position for Germanic inefficiency is the theme park built five years ago around the famous Nürburgring Grand Prix racing track. Its major attraction was the fastest rollercoaster in the world, promising to accelerate passengers from 0 to 217km/h in 2.5 seconds.
On its maiden run in 2009, the rollercoaster exploded, injuring seven and demolishing the intial stretch of the track. The ride has yet to open to the public and the theme park, once conceived as a wholly private venture, has cost the public purse €330 million, with operating losses until 2015 forecast to top €33 million.
Germanic efficiency gave the world A4 paper, yet manages to broil hundreds of commuters every summer in 50 degree heat thanks to faulty air conditioning on its high-speed trains.
Germanic efficiency has created a healthcare system that, financially, is woefully inefficient, yet seems to make sick people well.
In Europe’s complex financial crisis, the attractions of cultural cliches are clear. But reaching for the cliche of German efficiency might give you a sleek Porsche 911, or the world’s fastest exploding rollercoaster. As Goethe put it: “Never has the world needed efficiency more, nor endured it less.”
