Berlin’s one of Europe’s most style-conscious cities – a city of museums, culture and solemn memorials – so there’s almost nothing more incongruous than publicly demeaning yourself in an orgy of drunkenness with a bunch other foreigners on an organized pub crawl. But if you can suspend your sensibilities it can also be a ton of fun and a great way of meeting other travellers – a bunch of us met on one and hung out for much of the rest of the week.

But there’s no doubt the event has about the dignity of a Club 18-30 holiday as companies like New Berlin Tours (www.newberlintours.com??) drag you from bar to bar, creating feeding frenzies in between on the street when everyone’s plied with dreadful saccharine shots. It must have been about five bars we hit, with our forty-strong group looking as out of place in the low-lit 70s decor joints as a hooker in a convent. The night included fire-breathing dragons, swapping socks, acrobatics on subway handrails, photos in the loos and much public face-sucking. People had started to hookup well before we got to the club – packed though it was a Tuesday – where the partying went on until 5, 6 or 7am, or however long you can be bothered since this is Berlin and who knows when anything closes or indeed if it does – the bar in my hostel was open 23hrs a day.