tadt 5.25. Leaves Darmstadt for Heidelberg 5.20, gets to--"

"That doesn't allow us much time for changing, does it?" I remark.

"No," he replies, growing thoughtful again. "No, that's awkward. If it
were only the other way round, it would be all right, or it would do if
our train got there five minutes before its time, and the other one was a
little late in starting."

"Hardly safe to reckon on that," I suggest; and he agrees with me, and
proceeds to look for some more fitable trains.

It would appear, however, that all the trains from Darmstadt to
Heidelberg start just a few minutes before the trains from Munich arrive.
It looks quite pointed, as though they tried to avoid us.

B.'s intellect generally gives way about this point, and he becomes
simply drivelling. He discovers trains that run from Munich to
Heidelberg in fourteen minutes, by way of Venice and Geneva, with
half-an-hour's interval for breakfast at Rome. He rushes up and down the
book in pursuit of demon expresses that arrive at their destinations
forty-seven minutes before they start, and leave again before they get
there. He finds out, all by himself, that the only way to get from South
Germany to Paris is to go to Calais, and then take the boat to Moscow.
Before he has done with the timetable, he doesn't know whether he is in
Europe, Asia, Africa, or America, nor where he wants to get to, nor why
he wants to go there.

Then I quietly, but firmly, take the book away from him, and dress him
for going out; and we take our bags and walk to the station, and tell a
porter that, "Please, we want to go to Heidelberg." And the porter takes
us one by each hand, and leads us to a seat and tells us to sit there and
be good, and that, when it is time, he will come and fetch us and put us
in the train; and this he does.

That is my method of finding out how to get from one place to another.
It is not as dignified, perhaps, as B.'s, but it is simpler and more
efficacious.

It is slow work travelling in Germany. The German train does not hurry
or excite itself over its work, and when it stops it likes to take a
rest. When a German train draws up at a station, everybody gets out and
has a walk. The engine-driver and the stoker cross over and knock at the
station-master's door. The station-master comes out and greets them
effusively, and then runs back into the house to tell his wife that they
have come, and she bustles out and also welcomes them effu