offee is served at 4 P.M. with _Kaffee Kuechen_, its attendant cake, and
at supper (Abendessen) one hot dish, generally veal, is given with a
choice of cold viands or sausages in thin slices--_leber Wuerst,
Goettinger Wuerst_, hot _Frankfurter Wuerst_, and black pudding.

If the above gruesome list does not warn the over-zealous inquirer, his
indigestion be on his own head.

In the south the cookery, though still indifferent, approximates more
nearly to the French bourgeois cookery.

A dinner-party at a private house of well-to-do German people is always
a very long feast, lasting at least two hours, and the cookery, though
good, is heavy and rich, and too many sauces accompany the meats. Many
of the dishes are not served _a la Russe_, but are brought round in
order that one may help one's self. Just as one is struggling into
conversation in defective German, a pike's head obtrudes itself over the
left shoulder, and it is necessary to twist in one's seat and go
through a gymnastic performance to take a helping.

Except in large cities the Germans are not given to feeding at
restaurants.

A golden rule, which may be held to apply all over Germany, is that it
is safe to take ladies wherever officers go _in uniform_.

The Rathskeller

In most German towns where there is a Rathhaus (a town hall) one finds
the Rathskeller, where beers or wine, according to the part of the
country, are the principal attraction, single dishes, cutlets, steaks,
cold meats, oysters, caviar being served more as an adjunct to the drink
than as an orthodox meal. The most noted of these Rathskeller are at
Bremen, Luebeck, and Hamburg, and that at Bremen is first in importance.
It is a mediaeval Gothic hall, built 1405-1410, and it holds the finest
stock of Rhine and Moselle wine in the world. The wine is kept in very
old casks. One of the cellars is of particular interest as being the
"Rose" one, where the magistrates used to sit in secret conclave, _sub
rosa_, beneath the great rose carved upon the ceiling. The German
Emperor generally pays a visit to the Rathskeller when he visits Bremen.

In the Luebeck Rathskeller is the "admiral's table," said to be made from
a plank of the ship of the last Admiral of Luebeck, who flourished in
1570; and even more interesting than the Rathskeller is the
Schiffergesellschaft, with its strange motto and its even stranger
sign.

Beer-Cellars

Throughout Germany one meets in every town the large est