Berlin had been sinister of aspect; Munich was bland, a softer, gentler, less _verboten_ land. Its citizens were not merely courteous; they were aggressively good-natured, their cheerfulness bubbled over on all who came in contact with them. It was almost as easy to distinguish a native from the stiff Prussians who had descended upon them as if the two groups had worn distinctive uniforms. Yet Munich had by no means escaped war-time privations. Long lines of hollow-eyed women flowed sluggishly in and out of under-stocked food-shops; still longer ones, chiefly though not entirely male, crept forward to the door of the rare tobacconists prepared to receive them, and emerged clutching two half-length cigarettes each, their faces beaming as if they had suddenly come into an unexpected inheritance. They were good-natured in spite of what must have been the saddest cut of all from the Bavarian point of view—the weakness and high cost of their beloved beer. In those vast underground _Bierhallen_ for which Munich had been far-famed for centuries, where customers of both sexes and any age that can toddle pick out a stone mug and serve themselves, the price per liter had risen to the breathless height of thirty-four pfennigs. As if this calamity were not of itself enough to disrupt the serenity of the Bavarian temperament, the foaming beverage had sunk to a mere shadow of its former robust strength. In the “cellar” of the beautiful _Rathaus_ a buxom barmaid reminded me that Tuesday and Friday were meatless days in Germany. The fish she served instead brought me the added information that Munich is far from the sea. My fellow-sufferers constituted a truly democratic gathering. The still almost portly mayor chuckled with his cronies at a table barely visible through the smoke-screened forest of massive pillars. Collarless laborers clinked their mugs, quite unawed by the presence of city councilors or “big merchants.” A leather-skinned old peasant sat down opposite me and opened conversation at once, with no suggestion of that aloofness of the north. From the rucksack that had slipped from his shoulders he took a half-loaf of dull-brown peasant bread and a square of boiled smoked pork, ordering nothing but a half-bottle of wine. Beer, he explained, had fallen too low in its estate to be worthy of his patronage, at least city beer. In his village, three hours away, he could still endure it. _Ach_, how the famous beer of Munich had deteriorated! How far away those happy days seemed! And to think of paying three marks for a half-bottle of wine! Why, in the good old days.... And this dinner of mine—a plate of fish bones, some stewed grass, city bread, and city beer—worthless stuff—potatoes, to be sure, but not enough to keep a man’s legs under him for half the afternoon—and a bill of more than _eight marks_! I restrained my impulse to tell him of that prize dinner in Berlin.