Why didn’t Chris and Dan get into Berghain? Pt. 2 (classic)

On a Wednesday afternoon in Berlin, a woman named Kazina Kuna stood with a reporter outside a massive, graffitied building that looked like an industrial palace. She pointed at the metal door where, on weekend nights, hundreds of people would wait for hours in a line that snaked down the street. "This is the main door of Berghain," she said. Kazina was not a tourist. She was a DJ, a radio reporter, and a lifelong Berliner who had been going to the city's clubs since the 1990s. She had watched the scene evolve from illegal squats into a UNESCO-recognized cultural heritage site. And she had a simple, devastating assessment of the reporter's chances: "You look so American. They can sense you from miles away."

This is the second part of a story about why two nice young American men were not permitted to enter Berghain, the famously exclusive Berlin techno nightclub. The reporter, PJ Vogt, had arrived in Berlin with a plan described by a man named Lutz: instead of waiting in the four-hour line, he would try to melt into the scene itself—meet people, understand the music, and somehow belong. He had less than a week to find out if a poorly dressed American could find a temporary home in a severe German techno dungeon.

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