ABSTRACT

ONE leaves Berlin for the port of Hamburg by way of a quite unworthy railway stationthe Lehrter Bahnof. It looks for all the world like a covered-in goods siding that is only used occasionally. The platforms are almost non-existent: porters are rare: the newspaper kiosks are half filled and the buffets bleak and bare. On the morning I left the capital a long train of dirty passenger coaches with enormous wooden seats and doors in proportion drew up with a prolonged groaning of brakes and jangling of couplings. It was a market train and the broad seats are provided so that peasant farmers bringing their produce to Berlin can sit alongside their vegetable and fruit baskets. There is no danger of losing their precious beetroots and cabbages in a luggage van. The good folk of the countryside streamed out of the station, carrying their enormous baskets and crates as best they could, and in the case of one or two of the women their burdens were bigger than themselves. But all were cheery and all looked robustly healthy as they went their way to bargain in the market-place. A pleasant recollection of a depressing railway station.