The next day I wake up so early the sun's just rising. I walk out to the back lawn and over to the lake. When I get back, breakfast is set with plates of cold cuts and a thermos full of coffee. Some of the other conferencers are there, and the talk eventually shifts to skinheads. That is, to the basketball championships going on in the States this week, where Michael Jordan and Charles Barkley are going head to shiny head.

Already feeling the caffeine crawling around my inner arms, I head back into the city, to a Greenwich Village-like place called Kreutzberg with an area that's the spitting image of the East Village: all health-food joints, anarcho-hippy retreads with attitude, and young Turks all over the streets like Puerto Ricans, kissing each other twice on the cheek, honking their horns, and slowly cruising the main avenue. I sit at another cafe and drink a beer to cut the coffee jitters. When a pretty young hippy chick walks by, I give her a friendly smile. She screws up her face in disgust, and throws a crumpled gum wrapper at me. I figure she must be from NYC.