THE EARLY DAYS in a new city always feel similar to snorkeling, or taking hallucinogenics, or lucid dreaming – where nothing is fixed in place or context, where people and objects drift by as if disconnected from reality, where there are no memories.

And so it was for my first day in Berlin: men in lederhosen with fierce beards, bells as heavy as bricks hanging from their necks, were herding goats through the Brandenburg Gate. Ravers on a makeshift stage at Potsdamer Platz pumped out techno and smoke – protesting for the legalisation of marijuana. Those who weren’t dancing rested like dogs in the afternoon sun – heavy-eyed, stoned.