MUNICH'S JOY IN ITS CAFES.

Otago Witness, Issue 2369, 27 July 1899, Page 55

MUNICH'S JOY IN ITS CAFES.

HAL* 1 ITS SOCIAL LIFE SPENT AT LITTLE, ROUND TABLES. (Odd Economies in Bavaria —Women as Well as Men in the Beer Saloons —The Chair Warmers and the Students — The Waitresses and Their Admirers — A Notable Scarcity of Coffee in Coffee Saloons. Were there.statistics on the subject, and It is about the only subject in Germany upon which there are no statistics, they would make a surprising showing; lacking them, the guess might be hazarded that one person in four of the adult population of Munich is between ' 4 and 6 o'clock in the afternoon and for two hours again in the evening behind the doors of one of the places in which are found little, round tables, with something to eat or drink on them. These places are so-called cafes, which are nearly always also restaurants, restaurants proper, breweries, and the great mass of small beer saloons grouped Tinder the general title of " Wirthschaften." The police declare that on Sundays and holidays the average is not likely to be less than 80 per cent, of the adult population and 30 per cent, of the children, and that seems a low estimate. Certain it is that the combined seating capacity of all these places exceeds the number of inhabitants.

The cafe life of South Germany covers considerably more than half the social life. Here, as in France, there is no family life such as that known to the Anglo-Saxons. Most families live in apartments more or less limited as to size, and exceedingly limited as to conveniences. They are hot and uncomfortable in summer and cold and cheerless in winter — particularly -the latter, because both nations seem to consider warmth and comfort in winter sinful, except when they find them in cafes.- Social customs have something to do with it. In Bavaria afternoon or evening calls are held to -be outlandish and impertinent ; the proper hour for visits is in the neighbourhood of noon or preferably before, and they are extremely formal. Afternoon receptions or evening parties are almost unknown, except among those of the nobility who have lived in other lands. If the average, everyday South German desires to meet his friends he does not invite them to his louse, thus burdening himself with their entertainment, but arranges to meet them at a cafe ; each takes his family along, and the evening is spent with the perfect and agreeable understanding that everything is on the basis of every man paying for himself.

The time for the principal meal of the flay in Munich is in the early afternoon, and rarely is anyone invited to this meal unless he is a relative or person to be conciliated. The Bavarian does not understand the dinner party. From dinner time till 6 o'clock is the time for meeting friends — business or social, in cafes. The opera and the theatres begin at from 6 to 7 o'clock and are over early. After that comes another visit to the cafes for sausage and beer, and then bed. By these social schemes the Bavarian, who is not often iich ; makes the cafe, which is warm, welllighted, and gay, serve as his drawing room ; lie has to burn no fuel after his early dinner hour and his gas bills are inconsequential. The families in this most prudent of German cities who do not take these things into consideration are rated fits very well to do indeed. When a stranger enters a Munich, cafe for the first time, if he is unfamiliar with the peculiarities of the institution, he is always surprised at the make-up of the gathering he finds there. Thus he will reJtuark that a goodly proportion of the men jjtt fltaid men of affairs who have deserted

their counting rooms in the busiest hours of the afternoon in order to spend an hour or so over coffee and a game of cards ; the business goes on or does not go on, that is as it may be, but the coffee and cards always go on. Then the stranger begins to understand why it is that he can transact business, in bank or in commercial house, satisfactorily only in the forenoon. Few Bavarians, eager as they are to improve their fortunes would be willing to forego the afternoon diversion of the cafe.

Again, the visitor is always surprised 1o find that the patrons of a cafe in the ■..t'tcrnoon are not all, nor even mostly, men, but that in the better class of places the sexes are pretty evenly divided. In some, indeed, the tables are often almost solely occupied by women. They sit in groups of from six to ten, each with its own table, forming what is known a3 Kaffeelatschen — or Kaffeekranzchen, which is politer. They are a peculiar national institution, and are as nearly the counterpart of sewing circles as anything may be. Bismarck said, or somebody said he said, that these Klatschen destroyed people's reputations faster than they could be built up ; but as German women have not the temerity to meddle with politics, or with anything, indeed, above the rank of domesticities, the Government has not yet itself felt called upon to suppress them. The Klatsch is primarily for gossip, but as a German woman is rarely idle, she often brings her knitting ; divested of bonnet and wraps she is comfortably disposed for the whole . afternoon. The members of a Klatsch are usually elderly, but not always so ; often young girls are present under a matronly wing. They drink one cup of coffee and several glasses of sugar and water during their stay in the cafe, with the accompaniment of a doughnut or a huge slab of cake, the whole expenditure being six or seven cents per capita — including a tip of half a cent to the waitress. Thus they spend a pleasant afternoon at a nominal cost, which is again offset by letting the fire go out at home.

The mass of regular cafe patrons, however, is composed of two classes of men — students, who have not yet made up their minds to take- university life seriously, and the great mob of middle-aged and elderly pensioned officials whom a paternal Government retires in the prime of life to make way for a new generation. Office-holding in Germany is a trade, fostered by a civil service system 'hardly less demoralising than that of China or of Franco.

The German official plods along methodically and unemotionally, but still majestically in a harness composed entirely of red tape, knowing beforehand exactly how high he may rise in the public service, his ambitions quelled by the knowledge that the end of. his journey is within sight -at the start, and that he is assured for his- declining years of an income of which an American errand boy might be proud.

These pensioners form the groundwork of the group found in every German cafe ; they are called the " Stammgaste." That would be translated in America, somewhat freely, perhaps, as *' chair-warmers." They appeal- usually at 2 or 3 o'clock in the afternoon and remain until supper time, when — supper being usually procurable in all the cafes — they mysteriously disappear. During tlieir sojourn they have read a score or so of newspapers supplied by the cafe, and have drunk one cup of coffee, or one glass of beer, supplemented by many of water. Most cafes are proud of their Stammgaste. But they are not profitable.

The students in the cafes spend their time playing cards. In Germany it is something of an athletic game, whatever the variety, and the cards suffer ; so the student is not often profitable, either, although he drinks enough beer to remove Him from the undesirable side of profit and loss. The cardplaying is always a mild gamble, and a man may easily lose as much as a shilling or eigiiteenpence in an afternoon without becoming notorious. Some years ago poker was introduced into the empire, but the reckless young Germans took to it so rapturously that it had to be suppressed. The proper officials — a whole board of them — were inducted into the .intricacies of the game by a complaisant American, and, after due deliberation, they unanimously declared it to be a game of pure chance ; hence it is forbidden.

The service in 99 per cent, of Bavarian cafes is performed by girls. It is bad, not essentially for that reason, but as a consequence of it. Most of the girls are good looking, otherwise- they would be of no me as " Kellnerinnen." Primarily their businesss is to wait on customers, but equally they are supposed to attract trade and to keep it. A waitress of several years' standing usually has a host of young men acquaintances, and she is expected to drag these along in her train when she enters upon a new service. The duration of her usefulness depends altogether upon how long she can keep her little band of followers faithful to her. That is usually not long, for Bavarian girls are susceptible and sentimental things, and soon each begins to show a partiality for some one of the smirking youths who drinks his Kalbe at her hands. That is the moment that seals her fate. In every cafe there is a lynx-eyed individual, a slave-driver, called by courtesy Direktor, who enjoys a salary about the size of that of a General in the Bavarian army, and wears an immaculate " dic^y " set with precious stones, whose sole duty it is to bow condescendingly to every person who sits doira at a table, and to watch for little delinquencies on the part of the waitresses. So soon as this august person detects an undue liking between waitress and customer he decides that she must go, and go she does.

The average German is not a migratory person — at least not in his cafe life. When he finds a cafe that suits Him, he is content to drink there until the cows come home. He chooses the seat he likes best, and he may be found there day after day, year in and year out — that is to say, unless circumstances should arise to challenge his allegiance." Faithful in one way, he is faithful in another, and when bis favourite Kellnerin gets her walking papers he is sorely tried.. Ho may ponder the matter for a day or so, consult the philosopher he af-

fects, and call up to memory all the unpleasant things he has heard relative to the risk involved in changing the brand of one's beer, but — he usually ends by following the girl to the cafe in which she gets her next place. That is why the girl manages to keep her clientele. And that is why the director, seeing the persons in whose interests alone he discharged her drop off one by one, tears out his hair in vexation until the genus has got to be as bald as a bubble.

By reason of this disposition to flirt on the part of the waitresses, the ordinary patron (the man whose main purpose in visiting a cafe is to drink or eat, or both, and not to philander) gets little consideration and flat beer. To receive perfect attention it is at least necessary to buy the waitress a rosebud and to squeeze her hand. An exception may, however, always be noted in the case of a foreigner, preferably an American, in the German eye, and particularly the German .waitress eye ; such a one is simply reckless in the tip he gives, and that atones for everything. A Kellnerin gets no wages ; on the contrary, she pays the proprietor to obtain her place, and she pays him a stipulated sum daily out of her tips in order to keep it. A German gives a tip varying from a farthing to twopence halfpenny ; when a waitress gets fivepence from a foreigner she keeps a benevolent eye upon him ever after.

There are many rules of German cafe life^ which are not the less observed because they are unwritten. A man may not enter without doffing his hat. He may not whistle or talk loud, although he may — and always does — sing, when there is music in the cafe. Upon taking a seat at a table at which there is already a person or several persons, he must bow to each, individually ; also again upon leaving. He must ask permission beforehand if he may sit at that particular table. Should a general conversation ensue at the table, he must take part in it, otherwise he will be considered a cad. He eiikV never call a waitress ; she is supposed to be looking after his wants. Above all, he must never slam the metal lid of his beer-glass to intimate that it is empty, and that he wants more beei ; the only polite way, if the waitress is inattentive, is to raise the lid and let it remain so. He must not use a toothpick at table, although he may clean his finger-nails. He must use a napkin only as a bib — but that is perhaps a matter of taste, for it is only the waitresses that he offends if he uses it otherwise.

The waitress has to account for all the i tablecloths and napkins that are used at her j table. In even the best cafes and restaur- , ants a tablecloth is supposed to hold out j for a full week; should it not do so the j waitress has to supply the napkins used to i cover its delinquencies. In .the case ot ' napkins proper, each, is supposed to serve until it is perceptibly and incontestably out of condition. Every night before going home the waitress gathers up the napkins that have been used at her tables during ' the day, and scans them narrowly. Those that have been used properly require only ' a little damping before going into a press, and are ready for service the next day, as good as new. This is the reason for the unwritten rule. • \ There are other things in German cafe | life which seem peculiar on first acquaint- > ance. In the first place, in not one cafe in 50 is there any real coffee in the coffee they sell ; it is variously made from chicory, , from figs, from wheat, and from various . roots. Real coffee in Munich costs 20c for I a cup holding about a gill, with the milk. ' The South Germans are large consumers of what is thus called coffee, and it might be bad for their nerves if matters were otherwise. They are also extremely fond of cake, but never eat it except when they dip it into coffee. In eating, a knife is the principal, almost the sole, implement, and they never let go of it. They will sometimes lay down a spoon or a fork, but a knife — never. It is considered rather bad I form to talk while eating, but if the necessity arises, a German will emphasise all his remarks with his knife, lay it against the side of his nose in token of thought or imagined sagacity, or brandish it for defiance — but he cannot be induced to drop it. _ j Beer, even in the cafes, is, of course, the prime drink, and it is so good that nobody ' ought to want to drink anything else, bufc latterly, in addition to coffee, many Germans have taken to tea. Not so very long ago it wa's Tegarded purely as a medicine, specifically for colic, and, as made in Mun- , ich, it seems as if it still might be efficacious in that malady; but the Bavarians, who have a touch of Anglomania, profess to like it. For tea-drinkers there are four saloons in Munich which sell little else. Within the last three years, also, the Bavarians, always supposed to be exempt from the taste of strong waters, have displayed a growing liking for what they imagine to ' be "American drinks." In that timp no ' .fewer than six "American bars" have been established here, and the German youth feels particularly devilish when he calls for a " sharry koabler." But e¥en these barrooms are spurious; they are provided with tables, and one must sit, after the German fashion. - * A peculiarity of the Munich cafe cannot fail to be noticed by the most casual observer on his first visit, they are the meeting places of dogs as well as of men. The Munich dog is worthy of a volume to himself. There are no cats and no mice, but the dog population is as numerous as the human. Dogs are treated by the Bavarian as his children, and he takes them to his cafe as he takes his children. The dogs never fight; they are fond of malting friendly acquaintances, and the daily visit to the cafe seems to be regarded by them as a natural right. Many of them drink coffee, but they prefer beer, or even sugared water. And always, under the most exhilarating circumstances, do they remain as sober and circumspect as their masters. — Munich Letter.