So you get your extra ticket, and then you wait with everyone else in a big room where most people are eating and drinking to wile away the time. Don't imagine that you can find your empty train, choose your corner, and settle yourself comfortably for your journey as you can in England. You are well looked after, but if you are used to England you never quite lose the impression in Germany that if you are not an official or a soldier you must be a criminal, and that if you move an inch to right or left of what is prescribed you will hear of it. Just before the train starts the warders open your prison doors and shout out the chief places the train travels to. So you hustle along with everyone else, and get the best place you can, and are hauled out by a watchful conductor when you arrive. If it is a small station there is sure to be a dearth of porters, but you get your luggage by going to the proper office and giving up the slip of paper you received when it was weighed. Never forget, as I have known English people do, that you cannot travel in Germany without having your luggage weighed and receiving the _Schein_ for it. If you lose the _Schein_ you are undone. I cannot tell you exactly what would happen, because it would be a tragedy without precedent, but it is impossible that German officials would surrender a trunk without receiving a _Schein_ in exchange; at least, not without months of rigmarole and delay. Even when it is the official who blunders the public suffers for it. We were travelling some years ago from Leipzig to London when the guard examining our tickets let one blow away. Luckily some German gentlemen in the carriage with us saw what happened, gave us their addresses, and offered to help us in any way they could. But we had to buy a fresh ticket and trust to getting our money back by correspondence. Six months later we did get it back, and this is an exact translation of the letter accompanying it:-- "In answer to your gracious letter of the 26th September, we inform your wellbornship, respectfully, that the Ticket Office here is directed, in regard to the ticket by you on the 23rd of September taken, by the guard in checking lost ticket Leipzig-London via Calais 2nd class, the for the distance Hanover to London outpaid fare of 71 m. 40 pf. by post to you to refund." One must admire the mind that can compose a sentence like that without either losing its way or turning dizzy.