THE WANDERER.

On a clear spring afternoon in Berlin, Bill and Chelsea Clinton rode to the World Cup final in the front seats of a bus. The Olympic Stadium--a severe Greco-Roman construction with Fascist flourishes and corporate logos--was built for the 1936 Games and still looks very much as it did seventy years ago, when Jesse Owens outran the racial theories of his host. But the World Cup tournament had been a surpassingly apolitical event, and now, in the fields and parking lots surrounding the stadium, cheerful venders sold lager and wurst at non-rip-off prices. There were no drunks, no thugs, no skinhead invective. Although the Germans had been eliminated by the Italians in a brutal semifinal, the city was in a mood of lighthearted self-satisfaction. The souvenir stores sold German history as kitsch: one popular postcard was a picture of Erich Honecker over his declaration "Die Mauer bleibt noch 100 Jahre" ("The Wall will endure for a hundred years").

As the bus pulled up to the stadium, a few people stopped to greet the ex-President and his daughter, but most hustled to the gates in orderly streams. Clinton, though he may be less schooled in "the beautiful game" than in the fortunes of the Arkansas Razorbacks, said, "I'm totally psyched for this."

The Clintons took their seats in the "statesmen's section," at midfield. While Clinton's statesmanship has been strictly freelance for the past six years, he was not far from the German Chancellor, Angela Merkel, and he spent time during the game, and during the breaks, chatting with old friends--the schmoozer in excelsis. He was in the midst of a long trip typical of his increasingly manic and global post-Presidency. He started out from his house in the New York suburb of Chappaqua, campaigned for a local Democrat in Indianapolis, gave a public interview at the Aspen Ideas Festival, gave a speech in Los Angeles, returned to Aspen, and then, flying on the private jet of one of his many wealthy friends, landed in Berlin. Immediately after the game, he was scheduled to fly to Cape Town, for the start of a seven-country tour of Africa, where he would look in on the H.I.V.-AIDS programs that the William J. Clinton Foundation, his base for good works, had established in the previous few years.

Upon arriving in Berlin, Clinton had felt the need for some improvised pre-game affection, and so he directed the bus, which carried him and a travelling party of aides, donors, a doctor, Secret Service agents, and volunteer advance workers, to the Brandenburg Gate, where more than half a million ticketless enthusiasts had gathered to watch the match on a set of huge television screens. The bus pulled up behind a stage that had been erected under the gate. Clinton climbed down from the bus and took in the mass of people. "Damn, that's some crowd!" he said. A rock band performing onstage got the signal from the wings to wind up a song, and Clinton, white-haired, trim, and wearing the dark suit and radiant tie of high office, strode out to the microphone and began to wave. The crowd didn't immediately know who it was--Is that. . . ? What is he doing here?--but as people began to recognize him on the big screens, with the familiar smile and the ingratiating squint, they started to cheer, louder and louder. It was impossible not to wonder what the reception would have been for George W. Bush--here or just about anywhere else in the world--and it is this implicit comparison that accounts for the remarkable popularity of Bill Clinton.

"I'm honored to be here, and thank you to Germany," he said, lolling in the warm bath of cheers.

Clinton didn't really have much more to say, and he knew that the crowd was not in the mood for a speech. It was enough to present himself and feel the love. He was beaming; his color rose to the high blush of a peach. And the memories! As he left the stage, he paused under the gate and pointed. "In 1994, Helmut Kohl and I stood on a stage here," Clinton told me over the roar. "That day, there were a hundred thousand people--but nothing like this. This is great. When I was President . . ."

The band started a strangely Teutonic version of "Bohemian Rhapsody"--Is this the real life? Is this just fantasy?--drowning him out for a moment.