I spent part of last Saturday looking for the Tresor shop in Berlin. I was armed with an address I'd found on Mapquest, and went to that address and found ... nothing. An office/apartment building, but no shop. Having been to the Hard Wax shop already, I figured I could outsmart this problem, so I started walking down all the alleys on the block, searching for the hidden entrance. Still nothing. Eventually I had to admit defeat. Does this shop still exist? Is it a real shop or just an office? A secret door underneath a manhole? Anyone?

On the way back home, I settled for wandering around the grounds of the hallowed club itself. Not inside, just the grounds, which were strewn with empty cups and the remainders of a beer tent, no doubt the remnants of a fine Friday night. The club is but a few hundred metres east of the former wall, and thus the exterior of the building has all the charm you'd expect -- a Soviet-era decaying concrete crumbler. When the club opened in 1991, it fit in quite well with the surroundings, no doubt. But Leipziger Strasse in 2003 has been drastically overhauled. With shiny office buildings lining the block, it now boasts a shiny financial district feel. The decades old building that houses Tresor is now very much out of place, as it rubs shoulders with modernity. It's a beautiful fly in the ointment.