There are few places more ugly to work in than the venue for the last meeting of the EU's Council of Ministers.
Foreign ministers and their teams of advisors worked out of one section of a character-less conference centre in some unknowable corner of Luxembourg.
The enormous EU media pack - boosted this time around by what appeared to be several thousand chain-smoking Turkish journalists - sat at 10 or 15 long rows of tables, hunched over laptop computers, under horrible artificial light.
Because whoever designed the conference centre did not appear to factor in the needs of television, the 20 or 30 live camera positions were installed all round the working journalists, using their pasty faces and shiny heads as a particularly nasty backdrop.
As the first night wore on and broadcasters ran out of anything sensible to say, they started interviewing each other.
Because the British government currently holds the EU presidency, British journalists were especially hot property, it being assumed that they had a greater understanding of the way this mess might be sorted out.
There was a very high premium placed on Austrian journalists, if anyone knew who they were.
Praying for agreement
Into this grim and perennially dissatisfied morass strode representatives of the national delegations, sometimes seeking to give a briefing, or a counter-briefing, sometimes wanting to spin a tale, sometimes it seems just wanting a break from the grind of meetings behind closed doors.
These men and women are like human snowballs. They start with just one or two people leaning conspiratorially in to hear their pearls of wisdom, then more people see them and drop ever so casually by to get in on the conversation until out of nowhere there are 50 journalists, cameramen, and sound men wheeling around the source.
Often those at the extreme edge of the circle do not actually know to whom they are listening, but they are driven by two powerful forces: the terror that they might miss some gem about what is going on behind those closed doors and the teeth-grinding boredom of sitting under fluorescent lights for 15 hours with no idea what is going on or why you are there.
Slowly the pattern of the long night - and long day to come - becomes clear. The Austrians - who have forced this emergency summit of foreign ministers because they want changes to the negotiating framework with Turkey before membership talks start - are to be isolated and then broken by the sheer unanimous will of the other 24 states. It is the EU's version of "shock and awe".
At dinner on the first night foreign minister after foreign minister is said to have risen and stated and explained his or her support for Turkey. It is one of the great, important games of EU diplomacy to show that you are not alone, however mad your negotiating stance appears to be.
But it was not a game that the Austrians appeared to be playing this time around. They were alone from the beginning of day one. And they were not budging.
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By the end of the night - around two in the morning, local time - the British representatives were looking drawn and weary. The Austrian line has not broken.
Foreign Secretary Jack Straw faces the media. Things are not going as well as he'd hoped, he admits. The situation is "frustrating" he says, but he "hopes and prays that we'll be able to reach agreement". The word "pray" is not often heard in such circumstances. It does not bode well.
'Fortuitous timing'
Monday was supposed to be a day of celebration - the day when Turkey starts formal membership negotiations and every cliché under the sun about East and West is dusted off and thrown willy-nilly at the page or microphone.
But it was not like that at all. British officials look, if it's possible to, worse than they did on Sunday night. Late night bilaterals - one on one meetings between countries - have not produced anything. The Turkish delegation is sitting in Ankara. The prospect that the whole thing may fall apart is suddenly rather real.
But then, around lunchtime, out of the briefings and the words whispered into mobile phones comes a note of very, very cautious optimism. The Austrians have stopped insisting on mention of some "preferred partnership" and have moved onto some sub-issues.
Did a good night's sleep - all of three hours - clear their heads? Have they had their moment, grand-standing for domestic consumption in front of the EU's foreign ministers, and are now prepared to deal? Or has something else been put on the table?
An answer of sorts comes five hours later. Word comes out that all 25 states have agreed to a test to be sent to the Turkish government.
And almost immediately afterwards comes the news that Carla Del Ponte, the chief prosecutor at the International War Crimes Tribunal at the Hague has ruled that Croatia is now fully cooperating with the court.
It was a lack of cooperation - one that Ms Del Ponte remarked on as recently as last week - that led to the EU suspending talks about membership negotiations with Croatia. Austria badly wants Croatia in the EU. The trade-off has been talked about for weeks - Turkey for Croatia.
"Nonsense", says one British diplomat, "there was no linkage at all between the two." The denial is flatly delivered and entirely convincing.
But a Commission official close to the negotiations undercuts it. After a weak denial, he is cajoled by a small group of journalists who know their stuff. A small smile plays around his lips. "It was" - he pauses - "fortuitously timed, was it not?"
Shotgun marriage
There is, of course, more waiting to be done. Turkey now has to agree on the new wording of the framework for negotiations.
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Things begin to get grumpy in the aircraft hangar as another painfully long night looms.
A request goes out over the public address system for journalists not to smoke in the public workspace. Several dozen hacks appear to light up simultaneously.
What's keeping Ankara now? But the Turks have waited 40 years for the EU to invite them to negotiations and they have their pride - lots of it, actually. And when we get a sight of the negotiating framework, it is clear there has been some delicate diplomatic surgery - nothing of substance has been changed.
But those sections which promise safeguards and inspections have been gently boosted. It is the sort of thing you would want your lawyer to take a look at, just to make sure that nothing important had been slipped in.
Eventually word comes that the Turkish Foreign Minister, Abdullah Gul, is on his way. The endgame is very close. There will be a handshake, some speeches, and negotiations will be declared open.
Jack Straw and Abdullah Gul come through for a news conference. They are improbably chummy. "My friend Abdullah", says the British foreign secretary.
"My dear friend Jack," smiles the Turkish Foreign Minister. "Jack" beams from ear to ear. Warm platitudes are exchanged, each with a little steel inside of them.
Jack Straw hurried off to welcome the Croatians into formal negotiations. He had made a mistake in a previous news conference of giving the impression that they would join at the same time as Turkey and a diplomat had hurried round issuing a clarification at the time.
Croatia would join after Turkey, he said. There was no question, he said, of them joining at the same time.
But nobody listening thought it would be just 45 minutes after Turkey. There is an air of shotgun marriage about the whole thing.
Eventually the British foreign secretary makes his way back to the Briefing Room, this time with the Croatian prime minister in tow. He announces that Croatia too is now on its way.
He sounds as if he is reading the statement as he is having a tooth pulled, or perhaps with a gun to his head. Or maybe he was just very, very tired.
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