These simple ceremonies give warmth and character to the countryside, but quite apart from religious exercises of the nature I have described, the whole of Cologne pours into the Bergische Land in the course of a fine Sunday afternoon. Various light railways issue from the city and, running across the plain, penetrate the valleys at various points. From the Dom Platz at Cologne you may, if fired by the spirit of adventure, take your choice of three trams to the Bergische Land. One will carry you in some forty minutes to the Königsförst, formerly a royal forest at the foot of the hills; another in fifty minutes to Bensberg, a charming old town crowned by an eighteenth-century castle in the Palladian style. The castle with its domes has dignity and character; it is now used as a barracks for French coloured troops. From the tiny acropolis to which the city clings--in spring half smothered by the white and pink of its cherry and plum and apple orchards--is the finest of all the views over the plain. Or you may journey for an hour northwards along the Rhine, passing through Mülheim--a widely scattered district of factories--till you come to the pleasant little town of Berg Gladbach. Here through a third gateway you may enter the wooded hills and valleys stretching to the east. Only there will be certain disadvantages if you conduct these explorations on the Sabbath, for the Boche in his best clothes is of the same mind, and the trams are crowded to a point of suffocation hard to endure on a hot summer’s day. But all the same the experience of a Sunday excursion is by no means to be missed, for then you see the life of the people as it is. What light-hearted, cheerful crowds they are! Families, father, mother, and children, out for the day together, troops of young people with knapsacks and mandolines tramping for miles through the woods, singing as they march, and as often as not waving their hands and calling out “Good day” in English. The group instinct of the German is very noticeable in his holiday-making. Picnic parties abound, clatches of children in the care of nuns and priests; more prosperous families out for the day in wonderful chars-à-bancs and wagonettes which are covered with green boughs and wreaths of flowers. In summer it is a point of honour for picnic parties to decorate their carriages in this way. I have often seen horses drawn up by the roadside in the neighbourhood of the Königsförst or Bensberg while the occupants were employed in cutting down branches and converting the conveyance into a green bower.