THE TRAVELLER.

New Zealand Mail, 29 November 1900, Page 59

THE TRAVELLER.

GERMANY'S LONDON

SOME DIsArPOINTING IMPRESSIONS

OP BERLIN

(By an English Visitor)

Trees, trees, sand, sand, a sheet of water, more trees, more sand, more water, desoVm? i r n gardens skirting the railway, then halt a dozen dismal piles of dwelling-houses, dirty white with broken windows, planted anyhow among this waste ol water and sand and tree, and—the train jerks up inside the Lehrter Terminus, within live minutes of Unter den Linden, palaces* 6 Bauer> an<4 aB the principal

Frankly, Berlin is disappointing. Early autumn may Be a bad time to see it, when every one is out of town. But the buildings do not go out of town. And the buildings and the streets and the life of the streets convey the sensation not of a world city, which Berlin boasts herself to V- ot ,. an overgrown residenz town, which Berlin is.

1 here is bustle enough in the streets, all the more because the Berlin coachman drives shockingly; while the Berlin public omnibus is shorter than ours and thicker, and very much more unwieldy. The straugvi had better take care how he uses the garden seats on the roof of these conveyances Outside the area of central streets the electric tramway service is good and universal.

i besides bustle Berlin contains many beautiful shops; what city does not ? Most ot them are to be found in FrieJerichstrasse, which crosses Unter den Linden ?L^ h r anß es ’ and ' vith the latter thoioughfare lies like a sort of cross upon tlie cuy. Friedrichstrasse is at once the Bond street, Regent street, Strand, and toticniham-court road oi the Imperial capital. lou get a savour of all these places as you traverse that renowned thoroughtare. And if you go along it in a northeasterly direction, you will come to tlie Berlin Seven Dials. You won’t have to take any turnings, or go first through a preliminary course of business quarters. J ive minutes in one of the fat omnibuses does it, and you pass from the region of guttering jewellers and pastrycooks into squalor as ugly and foul - smelling as the meanest quarter of our metropolis. NOT AN IMPERIAL STREET.

But Unter den Linden came as the greatest shock of all. Berliners insist that this main street of theirs, intersected down the centre by a. double row of lime trees, is magnificent. They get it photographed Horn every point of view; and in some marvellous fashion these photographs are magnificent. And so the magnificent photographs are scattered about the various towns of the empire; and tlie stranger sees them, and says, "Neither Paris, nor Rome, UQE. Greece had anything comparable to Unter den Linden. I will keep Unter den Linden till last, and then go home and die.”

t Hc keeps filter den Linden till last. He enters it perhaps from the Thiergarten and ascends it towards the palaces, looking right and left for the magnificence. He finds instead a quite pleasing thoroughfare, which can be matched for any of the qualities which go to make a thoroughfare by half a dozen similar streets in other German towns. There is an avenue near the railway station at Bonn which is far more noble; there is another at Wiesbaden, the Wilhelmstrasse, to give the name, which is far more beautiful. From one end of Unter den Linden to the other there is not a building worth a second glance. 'lf ever a highway savoured of the residenz town, this one does. You may almost see some dead and gone Margrave of Brandenburg airing himself here surrounded by Ilia dead and gone Court, after the meals which came early and often in those happy days. One might say similar things of our Birdcage-walk. But no one calls Birdcage-walk imperial. Rather it may be said to have quite a domestic interest to Londoners who care to weave into it tlie memory of Stuart Kings. BUT TWO IMPERIAL SHOPS. But there are two shops—they do not pretend to ‘Be anything else—in Unter den Linden which are imperial. One is the ticket office of the North German Lloyd, the other the ticket office of the HainburgAmerican Line. They are side by side, and appear to make no pretence at concealing their rivalry. Their respective windows are marvels. In each you have the wide world mapped out before your eyes and marked with tiny tin steamships bearing a number, and meant to represent the actual locality of such and such a vessel of their respective fleets at the moment. It all looks so simple, so orderly, so enticing. It is meant to look enticing, and men say that the order and simplicity of these beautiful maps and tin boats bring trade.

For the rest a nation gets the public buildings it deserves. The German Empire has not as yet been able to deserve a very commanding position for its Parliamentary institutions, so the Imperial City has to put up with a house for the popular representatives which is architecturally beneath contempt. The new Reichstag Building—that is its name—is hidden away-in the Thiergarten. Think for a moment if we were to bury Westminster Palace in the wilds of Hyde Park. "The Emperor does not encourage them/ said my guide over this building. This gentleman was a prominent Berlin lawyer, the class which must suffer most in a country where Parliamentary institutions are not encouraged. But he seemed quite content. "The Emperor does not encourage them, that is all.” SOME PRAISEWORTHY PALACES.

Now palaces, on the other hand, are encouraged very much, and in tho matter of palaces Berlin has the advantage of any city I have ever been in. They are not beautiful, but they are numerous; and when, one remembers that they are,collected together within an area of about half a square mile, the effect is disquieting. The house where the old Emperor William lived comes first, if you are stiil as-

cending Unter den Linden. Tious descendants liave-turned it into a sort of museum. You pay threepence at the door, and you can glut your eyes upon tho poor old gentleman’s trinkets and keepsakes and Kiiickknacks, which are left just && lie arranged and docketed them before he died. The thing is quite pitiful. And leet the busy eiowd hurrying up and down Unter den Linden should forget all about the exhibition inside, the window at which the Lmperor showed himself dailv at noon, when tne guard was changed/ is kept shrouded with a white blind. The sentiment niay be praiseworthy,. hut it is not pleasant.

A LONDONER LEARNS CONTENTMENT. Comparisons are odious. But a week in Berlin may send a Londoner home quite content with Ills own town, french newspapers jeer at our "dingy double row” of theatres along the Strand. Inside or out, • they are palaces compared with the playhouses lining the Friedrichstrasse, all cheap glitter like American dime museums. Indeed, Berlin is not at all unlike New i° 11 notab ly to the matter of broad and shabby avenues. Take the one leading to Charlottenburg, with its ceaseless noise et trains, its low frame houses, its innumerable lager beer saloons in brown and gold Germans can build magnificent railway stations. But they don’t seem to waste tlieir knowledge on this imperial city inedrichstrasse Station, the Charing-cros-s ot die German capital, is meaner and dirtier than any station on the London Underground, 'and about as lively as an imperial mausoleum. Try to imagine the railway bridge which crosses Ludgate-hiil, “toy be J ll1 ’ 6 T°2t leave Ludgate-circus and St. Paul s out of the picture. That will give you some idea of the approach. The Potsdamer Banhof, the Lehrter Banhof are equally important. They remind one ot deserted barns. You may look in vain all day long for a Berlin terminus which will match the serene magnificence—ves magnificence—of St. Panc-ras, or the cheerful activity of Euston square. In Piccadilly you will stumble up against an old school friend, who is possibly just thirty and rules a province. "Isn’t it wonderful! lie gasps-. He sniffs it all in; he has been dreaming of it seven thousand miles away under the Indian- sky. That makes a world city. Hie Irish “boss’’ who helps govern New •ii i I amuse the boys in his precinct with tales of how he landed at the Bargs prime not so many winters ago with his lieddnig and a borrowed twenty-dollar bill. And that makes a world city. But Berlin —Jberlin is provincial. Still, provincial cities have their a'dvantages. You can get a good room at the best hotel in this one for four marks a day and a dinner in the best restaurant tor three. House rent is no_t dear;' while vnuer tlie number of each bouse is an. airow pointing the direction the numerals ascend the street.

And at the best restaurant of all, while you are eating your three-mark table fl’hote dinner, you may see numerous intelligent aermans putting their knives into their mouths.

M hich, after all, is hardly manners behitmg an imperial c-itv.