t for a walk
and are thirsty. If you dislike thin sour wine you had better avoid
the grape-growing lands and travel in Bavaria, where every country
inn-keeper brews his own beer. Many of these small inns entertain
summer visitors, not English and Americans who want luxuries, but
their own countryfolk, whose purses and requirements are both small.
As far as I know by personal experience and by hearsay, the rooms in
these inns are always clean. The bedding all over Germany is most
scrupulously kept and aired. In country places you see the mattresses
and feather beds hanging out of the windows near the pots of
carnations every sunny day. The floors are painted, and are washed all
over every morning. The curtains are spotless. In each room there is
the inevitable sofa with the table in front of it, a most sensible and
comfortable addition to a bedroom, enabling you to seek peace and
privacy when you will. If you wander far enough from the beaten track,
you may still find that all the water you are supposed to want is
contained in a good-sized glass bottle; but if you are English your
curious habits will be known, and more water will be brought to you in
a can or pail. My husband and I once spent a summer in a Thuringian
inn that had never taken staying guests before, and even here we found
that the proprietress had heard of English ways, and was willing, with
a smile of benevolent amusement, to fill a travelling bath every day.
This inn had a summer house where all our meals were served as a
matter of course, and where people from a fashionable watering-place
in the next valley came for coffee or beer sometimes. The household
itself consisted of the proprietress, her daughter, and her
maidservant, and during the four months we spent there I never knew
them to sit down to a regular meal. They ate anything at any time, as
they fancied it. The summer house in which we had our meals was large
and pleasant, with a wide view of the hills and a near one of an old
stone bridge and a trout stream. The trees near the inn were limes,
and their scent while they were in flower overpowered the scent of
pines coming at other times with strength and fragrance from the
surrounding forest. The only drawback to our comfort was a hornets'
nest in an old apple-tree close to the summer-house. The hornets used
to buzz round us at every meal, and at first we supposed they might
sting us. This they never did, though we waged war on them fiercely.
B