SUMMER RESORTS
If you choose to leave the railroad you may still travel by diligence
in Germany, and rumble along the roads in its stuffy interior. As you
pass through a village the driver blows his horn, old and young run
out to enjoy the sensation of the day, the geese cackle and flutter
from you in the dust, you catch glimpses of a cobble-stoned
market-place, a square church-tower with a stork's nest on its summit,
Noah's Ark-like houses with thatched or gabled roofs, tumble-down
balconies, and outside staircases of wood. Sometimes when the official
coach is crowded you may have an open carriage given you without extra
charge, but you cannot expect that to happen often; nor will you often
be driven by postillion nowadays. Indeed, for all I know the last one
may have vanished and been replaced by a motor bus. You can take one
to a mountain inn in the Black Forest nowadays, over a pass I
travelled a few years ago in a mail coach. In those times it was a
jog-trot journey occupying the long lazy hours of a summer morning. I
suppose that now you whizz and hustle through the lovely forest
scenery pursued by clouds of dust and offended by the fumes of petrol,
but no doubt you get to your destination quicker than you used. The
pleasantest way to travel in Germany, if you are young and strong, is
on your feet. It is enchanting to walk day after day through the cool
scented forest and sleep at night in one of the clean country inns.
You must choose your district and your inn, for if you went right off
the traveller's track and came to a peasant's house you would find
nothing approaching the civilisation of an English farmhouse. But in
most of the beautiful country districts of Germany there are fine
inns, and there are invariably good roads leading to them. This way of
travelling is too tame for English people as a rule. They laugh at the
broad well-made path winding up the side of a German mountain, and
still more at the hotel or restaurant to be found at the top. From the
English point of view a walk of this kind is too tame and easy either
for health or pleasure. But the beauty of it, especially in early
summer, can never be forgotten; and so it is worth while, even if you
are young and cherish a proper scorn for broad roads and good dinners.
You would probably come across some dinners that were not good, tough
veal, for instance, and greasy vegetables. The roads you would have to
accept, and walk them if you choose in tennis shoes. Indeed, you would
forget the road and eat the dinner unattending; for all that's made
would be a green thought in a green shade for you by the end of the
day, and as you shut your eyes at night you would see forest, forest
with the sunlight on the young tips of the pines, forest unfolding
itself from earth to sky as you climbed hour after hour close to the
ferns and boulders of the foaming mountain stream your pathway
followed, forest too on the opposite side of the valley, with wastes
of golden broom here and there, and fields of rye and barley swept
gently by the breeze. You may walk day by day in Germany through such
a paradise as this, and meet no one but a couple of children gathering
wild strawberries, or an old peasant carrying faggots, or the
goose-girl herding her fussy flock. You may even spend your summer
holiday in a crowded watering-place, and yet escape quite easily into
the heart of the forest where the crowd never comes. The crowd sits
about on benches planted by a _Verschönerungsverein_ within a mile of
their hotel, or on the verandah of the hotel itself. Some of the
benches will command a view, and these will be most in demand. Those
that are nearly a mile away will be reached by energetic elderly
ladies, and at dinner you will hear that they have been to the
Rabenstein this morning, and that the _Aussicht_ was _prachtvoll_ and
the _Luft herrlich_, but that they must decline to go farther afield
this afternoon as the morning's exertions have tired them. But some of
_die Herren_ say they are ready for anything, and even propose to
scale the mountain behind the hotel and drink a glass of beer at the
top. You readily agree to go with them, for by this time you know that
even if you are a poor walker you can toddle half way up a German hill
and down again; and the hotel itself has been built high above the
valley. But after dinner you find that nearly everyone disappears for
a siesta, while the few who keep outside are asleep over their coffee
and cigar. Even _Skat_ hardly keeps awake the three _Herren_ who
proposed a walk; and your friend the Frau Geheimrath Schultze warns
you solemnly against the insanity of stirring a step before sundown;
for summer in South Germany is summer indeed. The sun comes suddenly
with power and glory, bursting every sheathed bud and ripening crops
in such a hurry that you walk through new mown hayfields while your
English calendar tells you it is still spring. Later in the year the
heat is often intense all through the middle of the day, and the young
men who make their excursions on foot start at dawn, so that they may
arrive at a resting place by ten or eleven. "For many years our boys
have wandered cheaply and simply through their German Fatherland,"
says a leaflet advertising a society that organises walking tours for
girls; Saturday afternoon walks, Sunday walks, and holiday walks
extending over six or eight days. "Simplicity, cheerful friendly
intercourse, gaiety in fresh air, these are the companions of our
pilgrimage.... We wish to provide the German nation with mothers who
are at home in woods and meadows, who have learned to observe the
beauties of nature, who have strengthened their health and their
perceptions of everything that is great and beautiful by happy
walks.... Anyone _wanderfroh_ who has been at a higher school or who
is still attending one is eligible. The card of membership only costs
3 marks for a single member and 4 marks for a whole family. Some of
the excursions are planned to include brother pilgrims, and their
character is gay and cheerful, without flirting or coquetry, a genuine
friendly intercourse between girls and boys, young men and maidens, a
pure and beautiful companionship such as no dancing lesson and no
ballroom can create, and which is nevertheless the best training for
life." So nowadays gangs of girls, and even mixed gangs of boys and
girls, are to swarm through the pleasant forests of Germany, ascend
the easy pathways of her mountains, and fill her country inns to
overflowing. How horrified the little _Backfisch_ would have been at
such a suggestion, how unmaidenly her excellent aunt would have deemed
it, how profoundly they would both have disapproved of any exercise
that heightens the colour or disturbs the neatness of a young lady's
toilet. I myself have heard German men become quite violent in their
condemnation of Englishwomen who play games or take walks that make
them temporarily dishevelled. It never seemed to occur to them that a
woman might think their displeasure at her appearance of less account
than her own enjoyment. "No," they said, "ask not that we should
admire Miss Smith. She has just come in from a six hours' walk with
her brother. Her face is as red as a poppy, her blouse is torn, and
her boots are thick and muddy."
As a matter of fact, I had not asked them to admire Miss Smith. I knew
that the lady they admired was arch, and had a persuasive giggle.
Nevertheless I tried to break a lance for my countrywoman.
"You will see," I assured them, "she will remove the torn blouse and
the muddy boots; and when she comes down her face will be quite pale."
"But she often looks like that," said one of the men. "At least once a
day she plays a game or takes a walk that is more of a strain on her
appearance than it should be. A young woman must always consider what
effect things have on her appearance."
"Why?"
"Why?--Because she is a woman. There is no sense in a question like
that. It goes back to the beginning of all things. It is unanswerable.
Every young woman wishes to please."
"But is it not conceivable," I asked, "that a young woman may
sometimes wish to please herself even at the expense of her
appearance. Miss Smith assures me that she enjoys long walks and
games,--oh, games that you have not seen her play here--hockey, for
instance, and cricket."
"_Verrückt!_" said the men in chorus. "A young woman should not think
of herself at all. The Almighty has created her to please us, and it
does not please us when she wears muddy boots and is as red as a
poppy; at least, not while she is young. When she is married, and her
place is in the kitchen, she may be as red as she pleases. That is a
different matter."
"Is it?" I said, and I wanted to ask why again; but I held my tongue.
Some questions, as they said, lead one too far afield.
The majority of visitors at a German watering-place take very little
exercise of any kind. They sit about the forest as our seaside
visitors sit about the sands, and though they cannot fill in their
mornings by sea bathing, there are often medicinal baths that take as
much time. Then the _Badearzt_ probably prescribes so many glasses of
water from his favourite spring each day, and a short walk after each
glass, and a long rest after the midday dinner. Dinner is the really
serious business of the day, and often occupies two hours. Where there
is still a _table d'hôte_ it is a tedious, noisy affair, conducted in
a stuffy room, and even if you are greedy enough to like the good
things brought round you wish very soon that you were on a Cumberland
fell-side with a mutton sandwich and a mountain stream. You wish it
even although you hate mutton sandwiches and like meringues filled
with Alpine strawberries and whipped cream; for the clatter and the
clack going on around you, and the asphyxiating air, bring on a
demoralising somnolence that you despise and cannot easily throw off.
You sit about as lazily as anyone else half through the golden
afternoon, drink a cup of coffee at four o'clock, look at mountains of
cake, and then start for the restaurant, which is said to be _eine
gute Stunde_ from the hotel. You find, as you expected, that you
saunter gently uphill on a broad winding road through the forest, and
that you have a charming walk, but not what anyone in this country
would call exercise till they were about seventy. In case you should
be weary you pass seats every hundred yards or so, and when you have
made your ascent you are received by a bustling waiter or a waitress
in costume, who expects to serve you with beer or coffee before you
venture down the hill again. By the time you get back to the hotel
everyone is streaming in to supper, which is not as long as dinner,
but quite as noisy. After supper everyone sits about the verandah or
the garden. The men play cards, and smoke and drink coffee and Kirsch,
the married women talk and do embroidery, the maidens stroll about in
twos and threes or sit down to Halma. There are never many young men
in these summer hotels, and the few there are herd with the older men
or with each other more than young men do in this country. What we
understand by flirtation is not encouraged, unless it is almost sure
to lead to marriage; and what the Germans understand by flirtation is
justly considered scandalous and reprehensible. For the Germans have
taken the word into use, but taken away the levity and innocence of
its meaning. They make it a term of serious reproach, and those who
dislike us condemn the shocking prevalence of Flirt (they make a noun
of the verb) in our decadent society.
The _Pension_ price at a German summer hotel varies from four to
fifteen marks, according to the general style of the establishment and
the position of the rooms engaged. In one frequented by Germans the
sitting-rooms are bare and formal, and as English visitors are not
expected no English papers are taken. The season begins in June and
lasts till the end of September, and you must be a successful
hotel-keeper yourself to understand how so much can be provided for so
little, miles away from any market. Many of these summer hotels have
been built high up in the forest, and with no others near them. Some
are run as a speculation by doctors. There is hardly a woman or girl
in Germany who has not needed a _Kur_ at some time of her life, or who
does not need one every year if she has money and pretty gowns. The
_Badereise_ and everything connected with it serves the German
professional humorist much as the mother-in-law and the drop too much
serve the English one, perennially and faithfully. For the wife is
determined to have her _Badereise_, and the husband is not inclined to
pay for it, and the family doctor is called in to prescribe it. The
artifices and complications arising suggest themselves, and to judge
by the postcards and farces of Germany never weary the public they are
designed to amuse.
In Berlin, when the hot weather comes, you see the family luggage and
bedding going off to the sea-coast, for people who take a house take
part of their bedding with them. There is so little seaside and so
much Berlin that prices rule high wherever there is civilised
accommodation. In Ruegen £1 a week per room is usual, and the room you
get for that may be a very poor one. In most German watering-places,
both on the coast and in the forest, you can have furnished rooms if
you prefer them to hotel life, but as a rule you must either cook your
own dinner or go out to a hotel for it. The cooking landlady is as
rare in the country as in the town. Then in some places, at Oberhof,
for instance, high upon the hills above Gotha, there are charming
little furnished bungalows. Friends of mine go there or to one of the
neighbouring villages every year, and never enter a hotel. They either
take a servant with them, or find someone on the spot to do what is
necessary. When there are no mineral waters or sea baths to give a
place importance, Germans say they have come there to do a _Luftkur_.
A delightful Frenchwoman who has written about England lately is
amused by our everlasting babble about a "change." This one needs a
change, she says, and that one is away for a change, and the other
means to have a change next week. So the Germans amuse us by their
eternal "cures." One tries air, and the other water, and the next
iron, and the fourth sulphur, while the number and variety of nerve
cures, _Blutarmut_ cures, diet cures, and obesity cures are
bewildering. It is difficult to believe that life in a hotel can cure
anyone anywhere. However, in Germany, if you are under a capable
_Badearzt_, there may be some salvation for you, since he orders your
baths, measures your walks, and limits your diet so strictly. At one
of the well-known places where people who eat too much all the year
round go to reduce their figures, there is in the chief hotels a table
known as the _Corpulententisch_, and a man who sits there is not
allowed an ounce of bread beyond what his physician has prescribed.
But the German _Luxusbad_, the fashionable watering-place where the
guests are cosmopolitan and the prices high--Marienbad, Homburg,
Karlsbad, Schwalbach, Wiesbaden--all these places are as well known to
English people as their own Bath and Buxton. Homburg they have
swallowed, and I have somewhere come across a paragraph from an
English newspaper objecting to the presence of Germans there. It is
the quiet German watering-place where no English come that is
interesting and not impossible to find. During the summer I spent in a
Bavarian forest village I only saw one English person the whole time,
except my own two or three friends. I heard the other day that the
village and the life there have hardly altered at all, but that some
English people have discovered the trout streams and come every year
for fishing. In my time no one seemed to care about fishing. You went
for walks in the forest. There was nothing else to do, unless you
played _Kegel_ and drank beer; for it was only a _Luftkur_. There was
no _Badearzt_ and no mineral water. To be sure, there were caves, huge
limestone caves that you visited with a guide the day after you
arrived, and never thought about again. There were various ruined
castles, too, in the neighbourhood that made a goal for a drive in
cases where there was a restaurant attached, and not far off there was
a curious network of underground beer-cellars that I did not see, but
which seemed to attract the men of our party sometimes. There were
several inns in the straggling village, for the place lay high up
amongst the dolomite hills of Upper Franconia, and people came there
from the neighbouring towns for _Waldluft_. The summer I was there
Richard Wagner passed through with his family, and we saw him more
than once. He stayed at the Kurhaus, a hotel of more pretentions than
the village inns, for it had a good sized garden and did not entertain
peasants. My inn, recommended by an old Nuremberg friend, was owned
and managed by a peasant proprietor, his wife, their elderly daughter,
and two charming orphan grandchildren in their early teens. The
peasant customers had as usual a large rough room to themselves, the
town guests had their plain bare _Speisesaal_, and we Britishers
possessed the summer house; so we were all happy. The whole glory of
the place was in the forest; for it was not flat sandy forest that has
no undergrowth, and wearies you very soon with its sameness and its
still, oppressive air. It was up hill and down dale forest, full of
lovely glades, broken by massive dolomite rocks; the trees not set in
serried rows, but growing for the most part as the birds and the wind
planted them; a varied natural forest tended but not dragooned by man.
The flowers there were a delight to us, for we arrived early enough in
the year to find lilies of the valley growing in great quantities
amongst the rocks, while a little later the stream and pathways were
bordered by oak and beech fern and by many wild orchises that are rare
now with us. It was not here, however, but in another German forest,
where, one day when I had no time to linger, I met people with great
bunches of the _Cypripedium calceolus_ that they had gathered as we
gather primroses. At the Bavarian watering-place we had the whole
forest as much to ourselves as the summer house, for no one seemed to
wander farther than the seats placed amongst the trees by the
_Verschönerungsverein_.
"Warum willst du weiter schweifen
Sieh das Gute liegt so nah,"
says Goethe, and most Germans out for their summer holiday seem to
take his advice in the most literal way, and find their happiness as
near home as they possibly can.
When you begin to think about the actual process of travelling in
Germany, the tiresome business of getting from the city to the forest
village, for instance, you at once remember both the many complaints
you have heard Germans make of our system, or rather want of system,
and the bitter scorn poured on German fussiness by travelling Britons.
The ways of one nation are certainly not the ways of another in this
respect. Directly I cross the German frontier I know that I am safe
from muddle and mistakes, that I need not look after myself or my
luggage, that I cannot get into a wrong train or alight at a wrong
station, or suffer any injury through carelessness or mismanagement.
Everything is managed for me, and on long journeys in the corridor
trains things are well managed. But your carriage is far more likely
to be unpleasantly crowded in Germany than in England; and as
hand-luggage is not charged for, the public takes all it can, and
fills the racks, the seats, and the floor with heavy bags and
portmanteaux. In bygone years the saying was that none travelled first
class save fools and Englishmen, but nowadays Germans travel in their
own first-class carriages a good deal. The third-class accommodation
is wretched, more fit for animals than men. In some districts there
are fourth-class uncovered seats on the roof of the carriages, but I
have only seen these used in summer. When I was last in Germany a year
ago there was much excitement and indignation over certain changes
that were to make travelling dearer for everyone. All luggage in the
van was to be paid for in future, first-class fares were to be raised,
and no return tickets issued.
But you must not think that when you have bought a ticket from one
place to another you can get to it by any train you please. "I want
the 10.15 to Entepfuhl," you say to the nearest and biggest official
you can see; and he looks at your ticket.
"_Personenzug_," he says in a withering way,--"the 10.15 is an
express."
You say humbly that you like an express.
"Then you must get an extra ticket," he says, "This one only admits
you to slow trains."
So you get your extra ticket, and then you wait with everyone else in
a big room where most people are eating and drinking to wile away the
time. Don't imagine that you can find your empty train, choose your
corner, and settle yourself comfortably for your journey as you can in
England. You are well looked after, but if you are used to England
you never quite lose the impression in Germany that if you are not an
official or a soldier you must be a criminal, and that if you move an
inch to right or left of what is prescribed you will hear of it. Just
before the train starts the warders open your prison doors and shout
out the chief places the train travels to. So you hustle along with
everyone else, and get the best place you can, and are hauled out by a
watchful conductor when you arrive. If it is a small station there is
sure to be a dearth of porters, but you get your luggage by going to
the proper office and giving up the slip of paper you received when it
was weighed. Never forget, as I have known English people do, that you
cannot travel in Germany without having your luggage weighed and
receiving the _Schein_ for it. If you lose the _Schein_ you are
undone. I cannot tell you exactly what would happen, because it would
be a tragedy without precedent, but it is impossible that German
officials would surrender a trunk without receiving a _Schein_ in
exchange; at least, not without months of rigmarole and delay. Even
when it is the official who blunders the public suffers for it. We
were travelling some years ago from Leipzig to London when the guard
examining our tickets let one blow away. Luckily some German gentlemen
in the carriage with us saw what happened, gave us their addresses,
and offered to help us in any way they could. But we had to buy a
fresh ticket and trust to getting our money back by correspondence.
Six months later we did get it back, and this is an exact translation
of the letter accompanying it:--
"In answer to your gracious letter of the 26th September, we
inform your wellbornship, respectfully, that the Ticket
Office here is directed, in regard to the ticket by you on
the 23rd of September taken, by the guard in checking lost
ticket Leipzig-London via Calais 2nd class, the for the
distance Hanover to London outpaid fare of 71 m. 40 pf. by
post to you to refund."
One must admire the mind that can compose a sentence like that without
either losing its way or turning dizzy.
But if you want to see what Germans can give you in the way of order
and comfort you must leave the railroad and travel in one of their big
American liners. Even if you are not going to America, but only from
Hamburg to Dover, it is well worth doing. The interest of it begins
the day before, when you take your trunks to the docks and see the
steerage passengers assembled for their start. They are a strange
gipsy-looking folk, for the most part from the eastern frontier of
Germany, bare-footed and wearing scraps of brighter colours than
western people choose. When we arrived the doctor was examining their
eyes in an open shed, and we saw them huddled together in families
waiting their turn. There was no weeping and wailing as there is when
the Irish leave their shores. These people looked scared by the bustle
of departure, and concerned for the little children with them, and for
their poor bundles of clothes; but they did not seem unhappy. In the
luggage bureau itself you came across the emigrant upsides with
fortune, the successful business German returning to America after a
summer holiday in his native land, and speaking the most hideously
corrupt and vulgar English ever heard. The most harsh and nasal
American is heavenly music compared with nasal American spoken by a
German tongue. The great ship was crowded with people of this type,
and the resources of Europe could hardly supply them with the
luxuries they wanted. We had a special train next day to Cuxhaven, and
an army of blue-coated white-gloved stewards to meet us on the
platform, and a band to play us on board. Our private rooms were hung
with pale blue silk and painted with white enamel and furnished with
satin-wood; the passages had marble floors; there were quantities of
flowers everywhere, and books, and the electric light. In fact, it was
the luxurious floating hotel a modern liner must be to entice such
people as those I saw in the luggage bureau to travel in it. The meals
were most elaborate and excellent; and I feel sure that any royal
family happening to travel incognito on the ship would have been
satisfied with them. But my neighbours at table were not. "We shall
not dine down here again," said one of them, speaking with the twang I
have described. "After to-night we shall have all our meals in the
Ritz Restaurant." I looked at her reflectively, and next day after
breakfast I stood on the bridge and looked at the other emigrants. The
women were singing an interminable droning mass, the men sat about on
sacks and played cards, the bare-footed children scuttled to and fro.
"One day some of these people will come back in a _Luxus_ cabin," said
a German acquaintance to me.
"And they will dine in the Ritz Restaurant, because our dinner is not
good enough for them," I prophesied.
Directly we got to Dover every feature of our arrival helped us to
feel at home. There was a batch of large good-natured looking
policemen, whose function I cannot explain, but it was agreeable to
see them again. There was no order or organisation of any kind to
protect and annoy you. The authorities had thoughtfully painted the
letters of the alphabet on the platform where the luggage was
deposited, and you were supposed to find your own trunks in front of
your own letter. I, full of German ideas still, waited a weary time
near my letter. "You'll never get them that way," said an English
friend. "You'd much better go to the end of the platform and pick them
out as you can." So I went, and found a huge pile of luggage pitched
anyhow, anywhere, and picked out my own, seized a porter, made him
shoulder things, and followed him at risk to life and limb. All the
luggage leaving Dover was being tumbled about at our feet, and when we
tried to escape it we fell over what had arrived. Porters were rushing
to and fro with trunks, just as disturbed ants do with eggs, but in
this case it was the German passengers who felt disturbed. They were
not used to such ways. When they had to duck under a rope to reach the
waiting train they grew quite angry, and said they did not think much
of the British Empire. But there was worse to come for us all.
Breakfast on board had been early and a fog had delayed our arrival.
We were all hungry and streamed into the refreshment room. We filled
it.
"What is there to eat?" said one.
The young woman with the hauteur and detachment of her calling did not
speak, but just glanced at a glass dish under a glass cover. There
were two stale looking ham sandwiches.
"Well," says my Englishman, when I tell him this true story--"we are
not a greedy nation."
"But how about the trunks that were not under their right letters?" I
ask.
"Who in his senses wants to find trunks under letters?" says he. "The
proper place for trunks is the end of the platform. Then you can tear
out of the train and find yours first and get off quickly. When you
are all dragooned and drilled an ass comes off as well as anyone else.
You place a premium on stupidity."
"But that is an advantage to the ass," I say; "and in a civilised
State why should the ass not have as good a chance as anyone else?"
The argument that ensues is familiar, exhausting, and interminable.
"An ass is an ass wherever he lives," says someone at last; and
everyone is delighted to have a proposition put forward to which he
can honestly agree.