All around us, cafes were teeming, the canal banks were lined with people reading, talking and laughing, and the vast parks were brimming with blankets and smoke and sunshine. But no one seemed to be working.

I started to feel somewhat cheated; things were too easy. The everyday stresses to which we were accustomed were now nonexistent. Every night there was a new adventure to take their place: parties in empty public swimming pools, raves at abandoned airports, nightclubs that stayed open for days. There were no deadlines to worry about or bosses to enforce them. There were too few limitations, and we’d lost all motivation and willpower to ever say no.

Soon our self-imposed five-day-a-week rehearsal routine started to crumble in the face of hangovers, comedowns and various members going AWOL. Sessions started being skipped, shortened or halved. We set a midday start time for rehearsals but, on many days, one of us hadn’t even been to bed by then. We were beginning to forget our reasons for having left Australia. The inexplicable energy of the city had taken us in, but instead of stimulating our music, it had only fueled our partying. We lost our “hustle.” And things disintegrated from there.

A member of our band was incarcerated for 17 hours, receiving a 1,600-euro fine for damage to private property. There were fights and drunken backgammon sessions resulting in heads breaking windows. There were infected arms, cut legs. We were the victims of credit-card fraud, theft and immoral drug dealers.

One day, while taking a break from staring at a nudist at the Hasenheide, I realized that I’d ended up in a kind of artist’s paradox: We had gone to Berlin because of the lifestyle it offered to artists, yet we were coming unstuck by that exact lifestyle. Berlin was ruining us. Soon I started to consider the unthinkable: returning home early to Melbourne, to structure and a sound state of mind, to my girlfriend, my family and my job.

First, though, I did a bit of research. And I discovered that, in 2010, so-called creative industries accounted for 20 percent of Berlin’s G.D.P. — meaning that there were people in the city producing art. So how had they avoided being stymied by the temptations of the creative mecca? Perhaps, I began to think, it was because Berlin wasn’t a creative mecca for these artists; it was simply home. We were the interlopers, making a pilgrimage and getting lost in the party, while they were busy working in their studios. Perhaps to these artists, we were no better than all the other tourists who came, wringing the city of what they needed for a few days, weeks or months, getting drunk, then going home. While we were in Berlin, we noticed a growing animosity toward the so-called “EasyJet set” — tourists taking advantage of cheap international flights to join in Berlin’s party scene. Was this why I never met an artist who had a coming exhibition or showing or play? Because they didn’t leave their studios for every party? Because maybe they didn’t want to go out and meet the likes of me?

Now, though, even the established artists living in Berlin are being pushed out. On Sept. 4, the notorious Kunsthaus Tacheles — built as a department store, abandoned and, after the fall of the Berlin Wall, taken over by expat and local artists — was shut down by HSH Nordbank, with plans to sell it.