It was meant to be a glorious day under the blue sky to dance to the beat of the world's best DJs. But it turned into a horror scene where young people fought for their lives during a stampede in a dark, suffocating railway tunnel in Germany.
In the western city of Duisburg on Saturday, at least 19 died and more than 340 were injured when the only access tunnel leading to the 2010 edition of the Love Parade - slogan: The Art of Love - became tragically overfilled.
First the mass of people, streaming from the train station in an effort to get to the last hours of the massive party, grew thicker and thicker.
People began to pass out from a lack of oxygen, then were bundled above the crowd in a bid for escape. Young people clambered up the temporary fences erected to keep them in, in a desperate attempt to get out. Some went under and were trampled underfoot. Others perished from asphyxiation.
None of the victims were over 40 years old, officials said.
Martin Hahn, a blonde 27-year-old raver in tracksuit pants and a white T-shirt, on Sunday stood at the entrance to the tunnel where he too could have died.
"I've been through hell," he said.
"I can't process this. The people trampled over each others' heads," he added. "We were helpless."
He placed a bunch of flowers on the ground beside the barrier at the entrance of the tunnel.
The 120-metre-long passageway, which runs under the old railway lines of a freight station towards the A59 motorway, became a fatal bottleneck, when too many people tried to pass through late Saturday afternoon.
Around 50 people stood around Sunday in the oppressive atmosphere, trying to come to terms with what happened. Neighbours placed candles and flowers where less than 24 hours earlier panic had claimed lives.
A sheet of paper pinned to a wall read: "Why? Our thoughts and sympathies go to the victims and their families. It is so senseless."
The strange character of the tragedy lay partly in that while people were dying underneath the crowd, DJs onstage continued to thrill revellers - under instruction of the management.
British DJ Mark Knight told the BBC that the organisers feared there would be a second wave of panic if the music stopped.
"A lot of people were completely unaware of what was going on," he said. "It was a very weird and surreal situation."
By Sunday afternoon, grief had turned into anger.
At a press conference given by local authorities and the organisers of the event, officials were pounded again and again with questions about what had happened and who had been in charge.
Under the cover of a now-begun prosecutors' investigation, Duisburg Mayor Adolf Sauerland and acting Chief of Police Detlef von Schmeling repeatedly said they didn't know, they couldn't answer.
In the course of the investigation, awkward questions about why the police and authorities failed to stop the buildup of people will be asked - and why the massive crowd of up to 1.4 million revellers was funneled through just one entrance and exit in the first place.
Duisburg citizens can hardly believe what has happened in their city.
"I'm ashamed of this city and this organisation," 59-year- old Manfred Pauls said.
Some of the people who survived still have the fear written on their faces. Maja Jakov, 32, described her experience in an interview with dpa.
"The tunnel was blocked. It became really full and I felt so powerless," she said.
"Yesterday we were partying, today it is grief," she added.