In and Around Berlin | Page 2

words which indicated contentment with her lot, "but it is not ze custom."
It was late in the season, and our lodgings were not engaged in advance. Americans in increasing numbers make Berlin a winter residence, and by October the most desirable pensions generally have their rooms engaged. By the kind offices of our friend, our famishing party were provided with the rolls and coffee which compose the continental breakfast, and a fortunate entrance was, after much seeking, obtained for us to a most desirable boarding-house. Our own apartment was a large corner room, with immense windows looking north and east, and, like nearly all rooms in Berlin houses, connected by double doors with the apartments on either side. A fire was built before we took possession, but it was two days before we ceased to shiver. We looked for the stove of which we had heard. More than one of the five senses were called into requisition to determine which article of furniture was entitled to that designation. Across one corner of the room stood a tall white monument composed of glazed tiles laid in mortar, built into the room as a chimney might have been, with a hidden flue in the rear connecting it with the wall. A drab cornice and plaster ornaments of the same color set off the four or five feet above the mantel which surrounded it, and a brass door, about ten inches by twelve, was in the middle front of the part below. On the mantel were disposed sundry ornaments, including vases of dried grasses, and the hand could always be held upon the tiles against which they stood. In a small fireplace within this unique mass of tiles and mortar, the housemaid would place a dozen pieces of coal-cake once or at most twice a day, and after allowing a few minutes for the kindling to set it aglow, would close and lock the triple door, and the fire was made for twenty-four hours. In two or three hours after the lighting of the fire, the temperature of the room, if other conditions were favorable, might be slightly raised. To raise it five to ten degrees would require from six to ten hours.
In response to our request to the landlady for an addition of cold meat or steak to the coffee and rolls of the breakfast, and for more warmth in the room, accompanied by an expression of willingness to make additional payment for the same, the reply, given in a courteous manner, was that Americans lived in rooms much too warm, and ate too much meat, and that it would be for their health in Germany to conform to the German customs. However, some spasmodic efforts were made, for a season, to comply with the requests, which before long were wholly discontinued; and the strangers learned the wisdom of accommodating themselves "in Rome" to the ways of the Romans. This, however, was not accomplished without continued suffering. The meagre "first breakfast," served about half-past eight o'clock, was supplemented by a "second breakfast" of a cup of chocolate or beef tea, at about eleven, to those who were then in the house and made known their desire for it. But the days were short. Berlin is about six hundred miles nearer the north pole than New York, in the latitude of Labrador and the southern part of Hudson's Bay. The climate is milder only because the Gulf Stream kindly sends its warmth over all Europe, which lies in much higher latitudes than we are wont to think. Consequently the days in winter are much shorter than ours, as in summer they are longer. All the mid-winter daylight of Berlin is between the hours of eight A.M. and four P.M. With dinner at two o'clock, from which we rose about three, there was too little light remaining for visits to museums and other places of interest, so that the chief sightseeing of the day must be put into the hours between nine and two o'clock, often far from residence or restaurants; so the work of the day must be done on insufficient food, and the prevailing physical sensation was that of being an animated empty cask. We thus reached a settled conviction that however well the continental breakfast may serve the needs of Germans, with their slow ways of working, and their heavy suppers of sausage, black bread, and beer, late at night, an American home for Americans temporarily in Berlin is a consummation much to be wished.
It is almost with a feeling of despair that many a woman first unpacks her trunk in the Berlin apartment which, according to general custom, is to serve her for sleeping-room, breakfast-room, study, and reception-room. In a lengthened sojourn, in hotels, pensions, and private residences, I never