"For heaven's sake," they say to themselves, "let us get away from
this place. Don't let us bother about where we shall go; we can
decide that when we are once fairly outside. Let's get out of
Munich; that's the great thing."
B. begins to grow quite frightened. He says:
"We shall never be able to leave this city. There are no trains out
of Munich at all. It's a plot to keep us here, that's what it is.
We shall never be able to get away. We shall never see dear old
England again!"
I try to cheer him up by suggesting that perhaps it is the custom in
Bavaria to leave the destination of the train to the taste and fancy
of the passengers. The railway authorities provide a train, and
start it off at 2.15. It is immaterial to them where it goes to.
That is a question for the passengers to decide among themselves.
The passengers hire the train and take it away, and there is an end
of the matter, so far as the railway people are concerned. If there
is any difference of opinion between the passengers, owing to some
of them wishing to go to Spain, while others want to get home to
Russia, they, no doubt, settle the matter by tossing up.
B., however, refuses to entertain this theory, and says he wishes I
would not talk so much when I see how harassed he is. That's all
the thanks I get for trying to help him.
He worries along for another five minutes, and then he discovers a
train that gets to Heidelberg all right, and appears to be in most
respects a model train, the only thing that can be urged against it
being that it does not start from anywhere.
It seems to drop into Heidelberg casually and then to stop there.
One expects its sudden advent alarms the people at Heidelberg
station. They do not know what to make of it. The porter goes up
to the station-master, and says:
"Beg pardon, sir, but there's a strange train in the station."
"Oh!" answers the station-master, surprised, "where did it come
from?"
"Don't know," replies the man; "it doesn't seem to know itself."
"Dear me," says the station-master, "how very extraordinary! What
does it want?"
"Doesn't seem to want anything particular," replies the other.
"It's a curious sort of train. Seems to be a bit dotty, if you ask
me."
"Um," muses the station-master, "it's a rum go. Well, I suppose we
must let it stop here a bit now. We can hardly turn it out a night
like this. Oh, let it make itself comfortable in the wood-shed till
the morning, and then we will see if we can find its friends."
At last B. makes the discovery that to get to Heidelberg we must go
to Darmstadt and take another train from there. This knowledge
gives him renewed hope and strength, and he sets to work afresh -
this time, to find trains from Munich to Darmstadt, and from
Darmstadt to Heidelberg.
"Here we are," he cries, after a few minutes' hunting. "I've got
it!" (He is of a buoyant disposition.) "This will be it. Leaves
Munich 10, gets to Darmstadt 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.
