Europe After 8:15 | Page 2

boat did you come over in?"
"The Maurentic."
"How is she?"
"Oh, so-so."
"I hear the meals on those English ships are nothing to what they used to be."
"That's what everybody tells me. But, as for me, I can't say I found them so bad. I had to send back the potatoes twice and the breakfast bacon once, but they had very good lima beans."
"Isn't that English bacon awful stuff to get down?"
"It certainly is: all meat and gristle. I wonder what an Englishman would say if you put him next to a plate of genuine, crisp, American bacon?"
"I guess he would yell for the police--or choke to death."
"Did you like the German cooking on the Kronprinz?"
"Well, I did and I didn't. The chicken �� la Maryland was very good, but they had it only once. I could eat it every day."
"Why didn't you order it?"
"It wasn't on the bill."
"Oh, bill be damned! You might have ordered it anyhow. Make a fuss and you'll get what you want. These foreigners have to be bossed around. They're used to it."
"I guess you're right. There was a fellow near me who set up a holler about his room the minute he saw it--said it was dark and musty and not fit to pen a hog in--and they gave him one twice as large, and the chief steward bowed and scraped to him, and the room stewards danced around him as if he was a duke. And yet I heard later that he was nothing but a Bismarck herring importer from Hoboken."
"Yes, that's the way to get what you want. Did you have any nobility on board?"
"Yes, there was a Hungarian baron in the automobile business, and two English sirs. The baron was quite a decent fellow: I had a talk with him in the smoking room one night. He didn't put on any airs at all. You would have thought he was an ordinary man. But the sirs kept to themselves. All they did the whole voyage was to write letters, wear their dress suits and curse the stewards."
"They tell me over here that the best eating is on the French lines."
"Yes, so I hear. But some say, too, that the Scandinavian lines are best, and then again I have heard people boosting the Italian lines."
"I guess each one has its points. They say that you get wine free with meals on the French boats."
"But I hear it's fourth rate wine."
"Well, you don't have to drink it."
"That's so. But, as for me, I can't stand a Frenchman. I'd rather do without the wine and travel with the Dutch. Paris is dead compared with Berlin."
"So it is. But those Germans are getting to be awful sharks. The way they charge in Berlin is enough to make you sick."
"Don't tell me. I have been there. No longer ago than last Tuesday--or was it last Monday?--I went into one of those big restaurants on the Unter den Linden and ordered a small steak, French fried potatoes, a piece of pie and a cup of coffee--and what do you think those thieves charged me for it? Three marks fifty! Think of it! That's eighty-seven and a half cents. Why, a man could have got the same meal at home for a dollar. These Germans are running wild. American money has gone to their heads. They think every American they get hold of is a millionaire."
"The French are worse. I went into a hotel in Paris and paid ten francs a day for a room for myself and wife, and when we left they charged me one franc forty a day extra for sweeping it out and making the bed!"
"That's nothing. Here in Innsbruck they charge you half a krone a day taxes."
"What! You don't say!"
"Sure thing. And if you don't eat breakfast in the hotel they charge you a krone for it anyhow."
"Well, well, what next? But, after all, you can't blame them. We Americans come over here and hand them our pocket-books, and we ought to be glad if we get anything back at all. The way a man has to tip is something fearful."
"Isn't it, though! I stayed in Dresden a week, and when I left there were six grafters lined up with their claws out. First came the porteer. Then came--"
"How much did you give the porteer?"
"Five marks."
"You gave him too much. You ought to have given him about three marks, or, say, two marks fifty. How much was your hotel bill?"
"Including everything?"
"No, just your bill for your room."
"I paid six marks a day."
"Well, that made forty-two marks for the week. Now the way to figure out how much the porteer ought to get is easy: a fellow I met in Baden-Baden showed me how to do it. First, you multiply your hotel bill by two, then