Germany in War Time: What an American Girl Saw and HeardMcAuley, Mary Ethel
History
Germany in War Time: What an American Girl Saw and Heard
McAuley, Mary Ethel
World War, 1914-1918 -- Germany
It is just the same with eggs. Suppose that you had a brother in the
country, and he wanted to send you one hundred eggs to pack for the
winter. He could not send you the eggs direct. He would have to send
them first to the central station, and if eggs were plentiful that
week, the central station would let you have the eggs; but if eggs were
scarce and were needed elsewhere, you are given only a small part of
the eggs. This plan is followed in everything. Even if you raise a pig,
you cannot keep all the meat yourself, you must sell a part of it to
your neighbor if he needs it.
The rolls in Munich are much better than in Berlin, and they seem to be
made of entirely white flour. Cheese is very scarce in Berlin, but in
Munich there is plenty of cheese, and it is very cheap. Pure coffee can
be bought at a dollar a pound without a card, and although there is a
sugar card the same as in Berlin, still all the restaurants and cafés
serve pure sugar.
The price of beer has not been affected much by the war and beer
that was twenty-eight pfennigs before the war is now thirty-four
pfennigs, and the Hofbräu beer, or the beer made by the royal brewery,
is thirty-two pfennigs. Fine malt beers such as Bock Beer and Märzen
Beer are prohibited from being made, as they take too much malt and
saccharine.
[Illustration: _Karl's Gate._]
One evening when I was there we walked through the Mathazerbräu, the
greatest beer hall in the world. The place was one mass of people
drinking beer, soldiers and officers and women. Most of the guests
brought their supper with them, and everybody was smoking. It was like
walking through a thick fog, there was so much smoke.
[Illustration: _Franz von Stuck._]
We went to a lot of theaters, cafés and cabarets, and they were always
full. Everywhere we went we had trouble in getting a seat. Everybody
seemed to be having a very nice time. They were not hilarious, but
they seemed to think that staying at home and moping would not help
matters. The most astonishing part was the vast amount of money spent
everywhere. Some cabarets only served champagne, and the spenders
ordered it by the quart. No one got drunk in spite of the amount of
fluid they poured into them.
The art show at the Glass Palace was on when I was there, but I did
not find it as interesting as the great show I had seen there the year
before the war. There were too many landscapes of a dull color. This
did not interfere with the sale of the pictures, and one-tenth of them
were marked sold.
[Illustration: _The Home of Franz von Stuck in Munich._]
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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