I'm staying in Berlin for a three week working trip, and of course there's plenty to see and hear.

A little less than 24 hours before the plane took off, the trip began on a sour note. I'd remembered that the Love Parade takes place in Berlin during July, so I looked for the date, and sure enough, it was due to happen on the night before my arrival. I was disgusted -- this was a serious brainfart because I could have easily flown in a day earlier had I been more on top of things. It would have all been in place. My trip to Berlin : paid for through work. Work : nothing to do until Monday. One million crazy folk dancing to techno in the streets of Berlin : priceless. Then I had to go ahead and fly in twelve hours too late. Idiot. I suppose I could take solace in knowing that the music isn't so much techno as it is trance-rave-E-soaked-crud, but that would be missing the point and trashing the good name of the intangible communal experience that partying in a street with one million Germans and pissing in the bushes and getting with the moment and pretending to love a bunch of strangers, provides. Or was I just remembering being eighteen again? Without the bushes, of course. And the Germans. And the street. Otherwise ...