Another American student of singing came to live there, and in the evening we used to go to the opera or to concerts together. Everything begins early in Berlin, and those who had tickets for some entertainment missed the eight o'clock supper. So plates of _belegte Broedchen_ (rolls with cold meat) would be set out for them on the dining-table, and all the others would be sitting there with their needle-work, and would demand "_Nun, wie war es?_" when we came in. On Saturdays the evening paper announced the program at the opera for the week, and we could hardly wait to look at it. The cheaper seats are in great demand. Students wait for hours, sometimes from earliest dawn, outside the box office on Sunday mornings when the sale for the week begins. We had an arrangement with the keeper of a little fruit and vegetable shop, to save ourselves the wait. We would decide what we wished to see and go over to his shop on Saturday evening to order the seats from him. He then went down early enough to secure the front row in the top gallery for us at two marks fifty, and we paid him twelve cents for his trouble. Sixty-two cents is quite a high price in comparison to those of the rest of the Opera House, for the orchestra chairs cost only eight marks. The top gallery is vast, and the back rows are much cheaper, but the authorities show their sense in keeping up the price of the front rows and I don't think there is ever an empty seat there. To concerts we were often admitted free, on saying that we were students, unless the artist was a great favourite, and in that case we could buy standing room, or seats in the gallery for one mark. We always went and came home in the street cars, paying the two cent fare with a one cent tip to the conductor, and dressing in our ordinary street clothes, with scarves over our hair. I used to go alone sometimes, and was never spoken to or molested in any way. No one looked at you twice, unless you looked at him three times. On Sundays I would take a day off, and, in true German fashion, make an expedition; in bad weather to some museum or picture gallery, in Autumn or Spring to some out-of-door restaurant. Sometimes I was too tired to go further than the _Tiergarten_. Then I would stroll gently across it and have coffee and cakes at the _Zelt_, or big open-air refreshment gardens where the band plays. They are the resort of _hoi polloi_ of Berlin in countless family groups: the father rather fat with hirsute adornments, the mother also rather massive, and their plump children, all drinking beer out of tall glasses and mugs, or coffee in inch-thick white cups, and eating wedges of highly decorated _Torte_, with or without the addition of heaped-up whipped cream.