The intricacies of paying your taxes take some study. Foreigners must pay taxes on money earned in the country; town and county taxes are payable every three months, on alternate months, in two different parts of the town. You arrive at the _Staedtische Halle_ to pay your town taxes, and you are very lucky if, after picking out the right month, you succeed in hitting the day when the place is open. A small sign on the locked door may greet you: "Closed on the ninth and fifteenth of every month." If day and month are right, you may easily strike the wrong hour, for town taxes are payable, say, from eight to ten A. M., and two to five P. M., while county ones are from nine to twelve, and four to seven. There are church taxes besides, very small if you are Catholic and larger if you are Evangelical. I succeeded in getting out of these by declaring myself neither. Unfortunately I did not know the word for undenominational and so had to say that we were "heathen." My sister was asked in a rasping official voice, filled with the large contempt for women which a certain type of German official always reeks with, "_Sind Sie ledig?_" She, poor dear, had never heard "_ledig_" before, and stammered "_Was?_" The question was rapped out again, and she said, "_Ich--weiss nicht._" When she got home and looked up _ledig_, she found the man had been asking if she were married or single. What he made of her answer we never knew. All these little things are very amusing in Germany. The way everything seems _verboten_, at first is annoying, but later amusing. The paths in the Tiergarten in Berlin always used to tempt me to be bad. I always wanted to walk on the path reserved for bicyclists, or horses, or sit on the benches reserved for children only. The letter boxes say to you, "_Aufschrift und Marke nicht vergessen!_" ("Address and stamp not to be forgotten!") The door mat shrieks at you, "_Bitte, Fuesse Reinigen!_" ("Please wipe your feet.") Towels, brushes, etc., all say "_Bitte_" at you. I believe one could travel all through Germany with just "_Bitte_," and get an insight into the different phases of German character through the intonations of this word. A rather annoying custom in Darmstadt was the way the bakers over-celebrated every holiday. They had usually the "_Erster, Zweiter, und Dritter Feiertag_"--first, second and third holiday, and they toiled not on those three days. All the bread you could get, if you had neglected to provide enough, was square pretzels, baked exceptionally large and hard. This may have been a Darmstadt custom only, as they vary so all over Germany, that what holds good in the north may be quite unknown in the south. For instance, cream is _Sahne_ in Berlin, _Rahm_ in Darmstadt, and has even a third name in other parts of Germany, which I have forgotten. You can get a wonderful _Sandtorte_--a firm, delicious cake, in Berlin, but I never succeeded in getting it just right in Southern or Middle Germany.