Counterintuitively, Heaven and Hell combined in more or less equal parts, is still Heaven.

Greatest weekend of my life. Was it technically on a weekend? I actually don't know, or care, what day of the week it is. H and I are at our wonderful hostel on Amsterdam's main drag by the baroque trainstation and canal cruise ships. We have survived, and thrived, in Wacken. It was the essence of Halloween and the 4th of July intertwined. There was smoke, rain, black earth, bones, bottles, leather, beer, armor, inflatable instruments, beer, beards, naked canadians, mud torrents, a wasteland of ramshackle tents, 3 gigantic stages, and 80,000 plus maniacs. We met or saw people from 24 different countries. We shared our tent with a stranded half hungarian Londoner and an incomprehensible Brazilian. Next door a Peruvian professional juggler shared a tent with a Colombian school teacher. I clearly and lovingly recall lifting a middle aged, balding, and kilted scotsman over my head during a concert. We hugged total strangers from Scandinavia, lifted the Irish after knocking them to the ground, saw and endless sea of heads simoultaneously nodding ''ýes'' to the same insane musical question. We high fived people in speedoes wearing viking helmets, towing inflated rafts filled with beer bottles. Never, not once, did we witness a fight, even a verbal altercation, and nowhere to be seen were swastikas, skin heads, or other scumbags. The youngest person I saw was maybe 6 and the oldest over 60. The tide of camraderie, the energy, the beautiful, strangely elegant quasi violence, all unbelievable and incommunicable.

So after 72 almost consecutive hours of lethally loud music, Harison and I are showered and in possession of a bed. I am less than a week from home, and we are both Beat-ific, bruised, sun scorced, and oh so happy.