And at some point it comes to an end. After all, Berghain is a club and not an after-party location. You go to the cloakroom and hand over your cloakroom tag, which—just one indication of the attention paid to every last detail—is not a ticket with a number, like everywhere else, but a metal tag on a string which you can wear around your neck or tie on somewhere else. Whatever state you might be in at the end of the night, you will definitely get your coat back. They think these things through here. Which is important when no one is in the soundest frame of mind.

Then you stumble out of the door and into the light. You nod goodbye to the doormen—not that you know them, but because you feel in some way indebted to them. Somehow you have to give the night some symbolic closure. You look around, feel the fresh air on your skin, notice how much you’ve actually been sweating. You hear the faint ringing in your ears mixed with the twittering of the birds, the chatter of people sitting around having another beer, and the soft rattle of the sound system emanating from the building.

Now you can go home. Or stop by Bar 25 again.