Vagabonding Through Changing GermanyFranck, Harry Alverson
History
Vagabonding Through Changing Germany
Franck, Harry Alverson
Germany -- Description and travel; Germany -- Social life and customs
Obviously it was a waste of breath to ask whether she was pleased with
the change of events that had given Germany universal suffrage for both
sexes. She had voted, of course, at the first opportunity, dragging
_him_ along with her; he had so little interest in those matters. Her
political opinions were no less decided than her artistic. Ludwig? She
had often seen him. He was rather a harmless individual, but his
position had not been harmless. It was a relief to be rid of him and all
his clan. He would have made a much better stable-boy than king. He had
wanted war just as much as had the Kaiser, whose robber-knight blood had
shown up in him. But the Kaiser had not personally been so guilty as
some others, Ludendorff, for instance ... and so on. The Crown Prince! A
clown, a disgrace to Germany. Nobody had ever loved the Crown
Prince—except the women of a certain class.
Bavaria would be much better off separated from the Empire. She was of
the opinion that the majority of Bavarians preferred it. At least they
did in her circle, though the strict Catholics—she glanced half-way over
her shoulder—perhaps did not. Republican, Sparticist, or Bolshevik—it
didn’t matter which, so long as they could get good, efficient rulers.
So far they had been deplorably weak—no real leaders. The recent
uprising in Munich had been something of a nuisance, to be sure. They
were rather glad the government troops had come. But the soldiers were
mostly Prussians, and once a Prussian gets in you can never pry him out
again.
We had reached the village of Hohenkammer, thirty-five kilometers out,
which I had chosen as my first stopping-place. My companion of an hour
shook hands with what I flattered myself was a gesture of regret that
our conversation had been so brief, fell back into step with her
movie-and-ragtime-minded husband, and the pair disappeared around the
inn that bulged into a sharp turn of the highway.
I entered the invitingly cool and homelike _Gasthaus_ prepared to be
coldly turned away. Innkeepers had often been exacting in their demands
for credentials during my earlier journeys in Germany. With the first
mug of beer, however, the portly landlady gave me permission—one can
scarcely use a stronger expression than that for the casual way in which
guests are accepted in Bavarian public-houses—to spend the night, and
that without so much as referring to registration or proofs of identity.
Then, after expressing her placid astonishment that I wanted to see it
before bedtime, she sent a muscular, barefoot, but well-scrubbed
kitchen-maid to show me into room No. 1 above. It was plainly furnished
with two small wooden bedsteads and the prime necessities, looked out on
the broad highway and a patch of rolling fields beyond, and was as
specklessly clean as are most Bavarian inns.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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