Friday 6th November 2009. Berlin. Day off.

As has been the pattern since leaving New York, I go to bed about 5am, regaining consciousness at around 1.30pm with that curious sense of freedom that you used to have on the first morning of the summer holidays.

I staggered into some clothes and headed down to the lobby to see if I could locate anything resembling breakfast. The elevator descended precisely one floor when the doors opened and in got Bono, Edge and a couple more of our tour personnel. 'Come to lunch!' they cried and within minutes I was downing a glass of a particularly pleasant Sancerre on a completely empty stomach (pillow to pissed in thirty minutes or less has to be a personal record).

It was a great lunch and served as that most rare of opportunities - a post-tour debrief. Usually, the end of a tour is much akin to driving a tank off a cliff - a final cataclysmic event that scatters the component parts of what used to be a unit into the far corners of the globe. The chance to say any sort of meaningful farewell is usually erased by the necessities of packing flight cases and doing runners to airports. This time though, with last night's post-show dinner and today's lunch, we have had a good chunk of easy, calm time to look back at the thing we made this year.

To be honest, we're all still rather amazed by it - it's not that we ever doubted that it would work, but all the same it did rather exceed expectations, mostly in that it proved to be such enormous fun to do shows in this configuration. That we have a chance to regroup and do it all over again next year, now knowing what we have, seems like luxury untold. I wonder what we'll do with it...

Needless to say, the rest of the day was a complete write-off, though I do seem to recall that from lunch we went to see Wim Wenders' photographic exhibition before the U2 folks headed to the airport. As for me, I'm staying another night in Berlin and then heading straight back to Los Angeles to begin production rehearsals with Lady Gaga. I know, I know.... 'out of the frying pan into the fire', p'raps, or 'from the ridiculous to the sublime' (insert the aphorism of your choice here) but whatever happens I'd say it's unlikely to be dull and either way, I'll still make it home for Christmas.