Quite a few are trapped in the new U.S. embassy just behind the Brandenburg Gate, where the sitting lame duck, ambassador William Timken, a famously ham-handed Bush political donor who once tried to hire an Elvis impersonator for an embassy party, declines to attend his own election-night celebration. This is considered in character but nevertheless politically baffling and quite cowardly. In other words, a lose-lose for Ambassador Timken. Some see a silver lining, however.

"Well, we don't think Timken speaks English well, and we know he can't speak German, so it's probably for the best that he didn't go to his party because we were spared the speech," says one embassy escapee before diving back to the bar for a drink.

The distinguished, white-haired Karsten Voigt walks out of the Wahlkreis crowd and makes his way to a waiting cab. Voigt, the former Foreign Office coordinator for German-American relations in the Schroeder cabinet, a staunch liberal, and a charter Euro-Obama-ist, shouldn't be here. But he's party hopping, just like Henry and me. What does he expect of Obama? "Several chances," he says delphically. "But not as much as people are perhaps expecting."

The "Yes we can" crowd is expecting a whole lot. Back at the Babylon, the East Coast has gone, Ohio's tipping for Obama, South Carolina and the Deep South have stayed loyally red, and Virginia...Well, we don't know yet. The pork is ladled out of the catering trays, the mojitos are flowing, states are falling this way and that.      

Aside from the political euphoria (of which there is a lot), the story of the crowd at the Babylon hews closely to the story of the American vote. The story is one of ethnic minority and its acceptance by the culture at large. Berlin has a sort of Sacher torte of minorities, and all are present tonight: there are the children (and grandchildren) of black American GIs, there are Turkish, Arab, and Greek kids, all stylish, all assimilated, all Europeans. Easily 40 percent of the Babylon crowd is American--there are an estimated 20,000 Americans living in Berlin--and that chunk of the Babylon brings with it the entire palette of skin colors that we now think of as...well, as the now-ordinary American palette of skin colors.

Most of the Europeans in this theater tonight have two strong bonds: with the exception of a few of their elders, they're young--estimated average age 25--but more important, they're right here, building the future of central Europe. Politically and ethnically, that implies that in the next 20 years--about half the time America spent getting from civil rights to electing a black president--Europe will have its Obama, too. The risky leading role is one we've often played.

At 5 a.m. when Virginia, the former slave state and central player in the Civil War, falls for Obama and--wham-wham-wham--the West Coast bursts the new president into place, the Babylon erupts in a dance frenzy. After McCain's moving admission of defeat, a singer takes the Babylon stage to sing, as he puts it, "a blues for McCain." The song begins with what we might think of as a line of true Republican longing: "There's a little red house over yonder!"

By 6:30, Obama's clarion eloquence reduces many in the house to tears. We file out into the gray autumn dawn. The champagne corks begin to pop in the cafe next door. It is Berlin, after all. The hard Obama Euro-core will be having its long, drunken post-catharsis breakfast.

Confirming the universality of the global experience on Tuesday night is my old election buddy and razor-sharp America analyst, Henry the spook. Stasi people didn't get to see things like this back in the day, and many of them are shy about seeing stuff like this now. Not Henry. "That," says Henry, as I walk him to the train, "was a true enrichment." 

*Name changed.