The soundscape of muffled techno, clattering flagpoles and jovial chatter drifting up Am Wriezener Bahnhof Strasse plunged me into a state of nervous excitement. After July 10th, when pandemic restrictions loosened to allow open-air dancing events of up to 1,000 people, Berghain opened its garden area, marking a big step in the return of Berlin's dance floors. When Panorama Bar resident Paramida started her set at noon, the line stretched far beyond the kiosk that usually sells late-night drinks and Bratwurst.

The queue was a spectacle in and of itself. Despite the midday heat, most of the hundreds waiting were shrouded in black, from classic clubwear like itsy-bitsy Adidas sports shorts and mesh tops to looks with more performance vigor, such as reflective Oakley sunglasses or Hoka Sky sandals atop knee-high nylons. One cameraman was shooed away as he tried to film the scene, and groups of ruddy-faced men on beer bike tours passed by to wave at the crowd. In the three hours I stood there, partygoers formed a community-like rapport, sharing lighters, papers, bottle openers and predictions on how much longer the wait would take. A bottle collector with a bushy salt-and-pepper beard showed off his vibrato by serenading us with Italian opera. Eventually, he came over and asked the woman in front of me if he could try on her sunglasses. She chuckled as he nestled the aerodynamic, frameless pair on the bridge of his thickset nose. "They're new," she said with a smile. "Dong Xuan's finest."

Close to the door, the big group behind me, made up of Burning Man enthusiasts from California who talked about their kids while suckling on individual packets of Justine's almond butter, were shuffled inside, ahead of 15 people by a bouncer wearing an "RIP Guestlist" shirt. "It was very fun not gonna lie (sorry)," my colleague texted me from within, after finding out I wasn't so lucky. He danced away the evening to techno-focused sets from Etapp Kyle and Freddy K, for whom the crowd went particularly wild. Though the Klubgarten is comparably tamer than a Klubnacht, word on the street says the old boy's still got it.

A third of Berlin's venues opened their outdoor areas on the first weekend of July, offering up a myriad of day parties to choose from for those fast enough to grab a ticket. That Friday, I visited Revier Südost, the new venue situated in a sprawling converted brewery by the team behind Greissmühle. Despite the imposing red brick exterior, the courtyard in which the club's open-air events are held is relatively nondescript. A raised DJ booth faces a cement dance floor, with a bar and beer garden-style seating area behind it.

Cinthie played a warm, vinyl-only house set as a stormy breeze caught layers of her dark brown hair. In front of her, the crowd of mostly twenty-somethings showed their appreciation by ebulliently swirling their hips or shuffling from side to side. As the Berlin mainstay pulled out tracks like Thabo's "Rude Child" and her very own remix of Ejeca's "Free Form," a worker sprinted through the sea of short skirts and sleeveless tank tops, reminding people to keep their masks on, as per the current hygiene regulations.

When we caught up over the phone the following week, Cinthie told me she's of two minds about the mask mandate. "On one side, I'm like, okay guys, it's outside and everyone's tested or people have the vaccine already. Also it's so hot you sweat under your mask and it's not really comfortable," she said. "But on the other side, I watch the news every day. Last year we had a similar situation, the cases were low, it was summer, and everyone was like, 'By autumn the whole Corona stuff will be gone.'"

On the contrary, Germany was headed towards another lockdown last October, as rising case numbers made contact tracing impossible, and there were only 33 percent of the country's intensive care beds available, according to Deutsche Welle . To avoid a potential fourth wave this time around, Cinthie thinks we should keep masks on for a few more weeks, just to be safe.

After Revier Südost, I was back on the S-Bahn heading towards Prenzlauer Berg. From the Landsberger Allee train platform, I could already hear Bloody Mary's "Love Is Acid" drifting down from SOUND's new open-air spot, SOUNDS Garten, a re-birth following the 2019 electrical fire that shuttered their Neukölln club. Situated in the back patio of a greying ex-communist office building-turned-hostel, this makeshift venue isn't much for the eyes. Still, it gained a reputation last summer for hosting some great parties, like MOTZ's Pride event with VTSS, Cressida and Lacchesi, when Berlin had similar event restrictions in place.

Inside, I found myself immediately wrapped up in the crowd's fluid movement, and after feeling a bit out of place at RSO, it was a relief to see a slew of familiar faces from different raves over the years. "I'm having a moment right now because I'm seeing people I only ever see on the dance floor," Tash Todd, who DJs as Bakläxa, said to me when we ran into each other. "Now that experience is back. It's so healing," she confessed. Looking at the soft sheen in her eyes, I, too, felt like something inside of me was melting. After a winter of increasingly stringent lockdowns, it finally felt like we could come together again in the ways we used to.

In the middle of a set speckled with cheeky edits and keys-heavy house tunes, Ady Toledano played Prince's "Purple Rain." Strands of hair flew into the air as a few long-haired guests, myself included, started head-banging. Hoping to stay on good terms with the Ordnungsamt, the party ended at dusk. Cheesy as it was, on the S42 home, listening to "Purple Rain" again, I felt a rush of hope as I basked in the post-rave afterglow.

The next afternoon, after my daily Covid-19 Bürgertest, I went to check out OXI Garten. Occupying the same location as the now defunct Kosmonaut Club, OXI's interior bar has an upscale speakeasy vibe, serving drinks that are otherwise hard to find in Berlin, like mezcal soda with a dash of salt. The open-air portion is reminiscent of a small festival stage. Raised pinewood bleachers line the periphery, upon which rows of boys in bucket hats and heavily designed Everpress tees sat and peeled their masks off for a moment. The covered dance floor means it's still an option on drizzly days, and much to my delight, unlike other open-air venues RSO and ÆDEN, the amphitheater seating ensures patrons are always within good earshot of the speakers. OXI has adapted well to "the times," quickly becoming one of the city's go-to venues since its opening last summer due to their al-fresco option. On Saturday, as DJ and production duo Thrived played a bass-heavy four-hour opening set to a heaving crowd, followed by MSJY, Kikelomo and Objekt, it felt like the place to be.

On a break from the dance floor, I met Simone, a freckled Danish partygoer in town for the weekend, and asked if she felt comfortable at the club. "I am vaccinated from long ago because I recently went through chemotherapy that just finished at the end of April," she told me. Starting in September, she went through three major surgeries and chemo, which coincided with Denmark's lockdown period. Now that she's recovered, going out in Berlin has the added benefit of anonymity. "I feel very overstimulated, but obviously here it's a bit easier because nobody knows me." Despite it being my third event of the weekend, I was also having some trouble getting back into it, and we both acknowledged speeding through our drinks to try and warm up to the hyper-social circumstances.

Last on my list for the weekend was Trauma Bar und Kino, a club and art space that's become one of Berlin's most dynamic queer spaces over its three-year lifespan. While I waited in line for the toilets, a man in all white burst out of his stall and made a beeline for the sink. There, he carefully unrolled a €5 bill, covered it in soap, rinsed, scrubbed, and put it under the hand drier. The queue erupted in heckles and laughter. At that moment, I remembered why I loved going out—the unexpected encounters I've experienced in clubs and DIY venues have opened up my world. Through them, I've become enlightened to the joys of talking to strangers and imbued with that warm feeling of being part of something greater than myself—even if just for a night.

For their first dance event of the summer, Trauma handed over the reins to a new party, Kontinuum, the first event from DJs and producers Soraya and Dmitra. The venue's concrete courtyard had three sections: a small corridor with an ice cream stand at the end, where ravers sought refuge from the sun, the main bar area, and a stage through another hallway in the back, with its own counter for beers and shots. Many of the venue's regulars—about a few hundred strong—attended, roaming between the yard's various corners, to dance and gossip and circle back again.

The dance floor went off like Coke and Mentos to live sets by Amigdala and WaqWaq Kingdom, and to the DJs Aiden, Cali Rose, CCL, Fashion, MDSM and Sentimental Rave. Soraya nodded to Berlin's 90s-era live club music scene with their choice for performers, and each vocalist whipped an already excited crowd into a torrent of whoops, hollers, flying limbs and fluttering rat tails. The DJs didn't touch their "chill day party" folders this time, delivering hardcore rave-oriented sets laced with pop edits silly enough to distract from the harsh clarity of the sunlight.

Right now, getting into a club in Berlin takes preparation. At all these venues, I had to show a negative Covid-19 antigen test (or a vaccine passport or proof of recent virus recovery) at the door, wear an FFP2 or medical mask when not seated and register online for contact tracing. When we caught up after Trauma Bar, attendee Randon Rosenbohm couldn't figure out why she got turned away, even though the venue was at capacity. Technically, she said, her fully vaccinated status means she doesn't count. "It must be because I'm ugly," she presumed, and went to OXI Garten, where she had guestlist, instead.

Like many people I spoke to over the two weekends I was out, Rosenbohm thought it was nonsensical to have to wear a mask while standing, only to be able to take it off just steps away. "At open-airs there's a lot of cognitive dissonance required to take your mask off and then put it back on and then take it off depending where you are or how many people you're around," she complained. "It's already the rule in public places like Hermannplatz or whatever that you don't have to wear a mask."

Yesterday, however, cautionary Instagram stories started circulating within the Berlin club community of fully vaccinated people who still became infected with symptomatic cases of the virus. The posts urged vaccinated folks to continue getting regularly tested before going out.

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So what does clubbing in Berlin look like after the pandemic? Promoters Dmitra and Soraya, DJ Cinthie and Clubcommission representative Lutz Leichsenring all think it's possible that we're headed towards a renaissance. "Berlin as a city has become so sad and kind of lost its touch since the lockdown and curfews," Dmitra noted. "Going through another winter without having a shared space to connect doesn't seem like an option."

Cinthie is hoping for clubs to strengthen the scene by offering more local residency opportunities. Lakuti, a selector and Uzuri Recordings's founder, who I caught up with after playing her first in-person set in almost a year at the Disobedient Circumstances and shitabel party on July 3rd, told me she hopes to see broader musical programming and the scene rallying together, so "no one gets left behind." Most notably, she urged, "The diversity that people have been speaking about needs to not only apply to lineups. It needs to apply to every facet of nightlife, including what we hear through the speakers."

With Berlin's reopening comes the opportunity to build something new. This summer, after negotiating with many of the city's districts, the Clubcommission will be offering funding to 13 local collectives as part of their efforts to support the free open-air scene. "If we want to be part of the city-society in the future we have to find ways to negotiate [open-air parties]," Leichsenring told me.

For now, clubbing in Berlin means waking up on Monday with a few mask-induced pimples on my chin, but the enthusiasm of artists and ravers alike makes these small drawbacks well worth it. On Sunday, the city's Covid-19 warning light jumped from green to yellow after its reproduction rate stayed above one for five days in a row. With 42.3 percent of Berlin's population now fully vaccinated, the future seems hopeful, but the spread of the Delta variant has complicated things, and whether this summer will see restrictions loosen further seems up in the air. Leichsenring says there are potential plans for indoor clubbing in the winter, provided patrons have a vaccine passport or negative PCR test. The Clubcommission is even discussing options for improving interior ventilation and air filtration. In the meantime, 8 AM U-Bahn rides are back to their regular mix of commuters and wide-eyed ravers. In the words of one woman I overheard last Sunday, "After lockdown... Thank god for this weekend!"