MOSELLE AND RHINE

Southland Times, Issue 23182, 24 April 1937, Page 13

MOSELLE AND RHINE

An Unkept Diary (Specially Written for The Southland Times.) (By J.H.E.S.) 111 Sixpence or so will buy you a long ride about Cologne on a tram, passing dozens of what they call “Sehenswurdigkeiten”—things worth seeing—round Severin strasse, the Saschen ring, Salier ring, Hohenstaufen ring, Hohenzollern ring, and Hansa ring, where you may hop off the tram, out of this historic circle, and into the modernism of the Third Reich, declared in Adolf Hitler Platz. This xs not a sight-seeing tram, as such; but the conductor has a quick eye for visitors and ranges alongside, every minute or so, to point out Opera House, Hahnen Tor—one of the old city fort-ress-gates—Cologne’s not very high “high-house” or skyscraper, the Church of the Heart of Jesus, or the turn down to Horst Wessel Platz. (This Horst Wessel, a roaring blade of Hitler’s in the early days, was somehow punctuated full stop during an antiSemitic ramble and has become a martyr. A commonplace song he wrote therefore stands high in the national minstrelsy or at least in the Nazi hymnal. There may be a distinction.) Not According to Baedeker But it is all wrong to think of the interest of Cologne as confined to these Sehenswurdigkeiten. The Opera House is just bulky and opulent; far more interesting, the frequent pop-ping-up of the word Konditorei—or Conditorei: the Germans have not decided between K and C yet—on shopfronts. The Konditorei is as common in Cologne as the cake-shop in Invercargill, and it is much the same sort of thing, except that you can always be fed in a conditorei but only sometimes in a kake-shop. Besides, the German cakes are amazingly more elaborate and beautiful confections to look at—terribly, terribly interesting, delicious, and deleterious to test and taste, too. — and the variety of entertaining sticky buns and other fiddle-de-dees is distracting. New Zealand is comparatively safe and dull, in spite of Via Panama” . . . Horst Wessel’s Platz (unseen, beyond the turning) impresses itself less than the trimness, cleanliness, light, breadth, and comeliness of the of the scene, right and left, through the windows of the tram. (Diminish the light, diminish the breadth, and no less is to be said for the tighter passages through Cologne, where we walked on narrow paths overhung by old stone walls and bulging house-fronts and might through one glass meet the gaze of a haus-frau at coffee, in another see dangles of sausages or plates of apri-cot-cake and cherry-tart, and in the next be invited to walk in by the room-to-let card, “Fremden Zimmer zu Vermieten.”) The ancient city gate, turned into a museum, had an archaeological appeal less than was subtly exerted by the irrelevant prettiness of the flowering window-boxes fitted to its grim ledges. Far, far more pleasant, when we got off the tram, to look a second time at this charming, incongruous exterior than to bend over the relics and lessons within, so easy to forget. There was only a short time. Why compress it to a purpose, to be sure of this and by no means neglect that, underlined by Mr Baedecker? We watched for a long time the clear green water flowing and plashing over tree-shadowed rocks and shapely limbs of stone; the green and the grey were so beautiful. Then 't occurred to us that the old man with a beard must be Father Rhine, the nymphs his daughters; and perhaps if we had had a book we might have read them up, instead of sauntering on, in and out of the shade, in and out of the sun, where the ground-ivy was dark round the boles of the trees and their tops were an endless, whispering variegation of green and gold. The Beckers We found ourselves back in a narrowish, bent street off the Dom Platz ; We found ourselves outside Konditorei und Kaffee, B._ Beckers. It was the sort of thing we wanted, and we went in. A delightful place, where red plush furnishings seemed comfortable and neither dusty nor hot, and bright metal and glass had a jolly wink instead of a cold glitter. A stand on the right exhibited in profuse array all that the Beckers could do in major'and trifling enticements, between coloured extravaganzas a foot across and six inches high and little, decorous things, almost, as Milton said, “plain in their neatness,” but how insinuating! At the desk on the left presided the senior Becker, an unruffled, incredibly well combed and tied and furbished old lady. The smiling composure of age without ailment or regret sat upon her. About the tables and fairways brisked and glanced the second Becker, her daughter, trim, quick, cheerful, confident, her pretty fair hair and her pleasant face seeming to make one light laughter together. In her wake moved Becker the third, though perhaps not of the Becker blood, the grave, dark-eyed beauty who fetched and carried. My German was shamed in the act; but to make our choice and make it known we had to range up to the stand and nod and point. So we nodded and pointed, under the old lady’s amused survey, until the beaming, rippling Frau Becker and her subordinate had filled our plates. As we sat down to them, with superb iced coffee, Frau Becker was beside us and away again, then passing, pausing, sailing off, and returning, not for a moment obtrusive but charmingly attentive, charmingly curious, friendly, and hospitable. I wish there were a word that would gather up for me and express the meaning of a score of looks, movements, and little speeches which declared that she was glad to see us there, interested in us, and eager to be sure that Konditorei und Kaffee, B. Beckers, pleased us. Jane Austen might have said that she “distinguished” us, perhaps; but that would have suggested something too formal. How does one infuse into perfect professional entertainment the warmth, the solicitude without fussiness, of personal welcome? Frau Becker did it—but not only she: they have the trick of it widely on the Rhine and the Moselle —and she did it, as she would do everything, with the addition of some quality purely her own, in the taking way and look of her. When we had come to an end of the plates and the iced coffee, but not till then, she drew up for a little sustained conversation. Somehow the old lady rustled smoothly into it, and the waitress hovered on its edge, and Frau Becker's son arrived just in time to help in advising us on a short expedition by river-boat —“Sie mussen aber wieder kommen! Auf wiedersehen!” We must return; and they dispatched us on the way to the ferry for Mulheim with these friendly farewells from the door. At Mulheim we strayed a while, looking through doors and passageways at vine-hung river courts and terraces, up little quiet side streets of soft-tinted houses asleep behind their curtains; and in the end we took the hint of the drowsy place and drowsed on the Rhine’s bank, with the city spread out across the water.

(To be continued.)