"Oh! take a pillow with you. They don't give you any pillows - not
like our pillows - and it's SO wretched, you'll never get a decent
night's rest if you don't take a pillow." She said: "You can have
a little bag made for it, and it doesn't look anything."
I met our doctor a few yards further on. He said:
"Don't forget to take a bottle of brandy with you. It doesn't take
up much room, and, if you're not used to German cooking, you'll find
it handy in the night."
He added that the brandy you get at foreign hotels was mere poison,
and that it was really unsafe to travel abroad without a bottle of
brandy. He said that a simple thing like a bottle of brandy in your
bag might often save your life.
Coming home, I ran against a literary friend of mine. He said:
"You'll have a goodish time in the train old fellow. Are you used
to long railway journeys?"
I said:
"Well, I've travelled down from London into the very heart of Surrey
by a South Eastern express."
"Oh! that's a mere nothing, compared with what you've got before you
now," he answered. "Look here, I'll tell you a very good idea of
how to pass the time. You take a chessboard with you and a set of
men. You'll thank me for telling you that!"
George dropped in during the evening. He said:
"I'll tell you one thing you'll have to take with you, old man, and
that's a box of cigars and some tobacco."
He said that the German cigar - the better class of German cigar - was
of the brand that is technically known over here as the "Penny
Pickwick - Spring Crop;" and he thought that I should not have time,
during the short stay I contemplated making in the country, to
acquire a taste for its flavour.
My sister-in-law came in later on in the evening (she is a
thoughtful girl), and brought a box with her about the size of a
tea-chest. She said:
"Now, you slip that in your bag; you'll be glad of that. There's
everything there for making yourself a cup of tea."
She said that they did not understand tea in Germany, but that with
that I should be independent of them.
She opened the case, and explained its contents to me. It certainly
was a wonderfully complete arrangement. It contained a little caddy
full of tea, a little bottle of milk, a box of sugar, a bottle of
methylated spirit, a box of butter, and a tin of biscuits: also, a
stove, a kettle, a teapot, two cups, two saucers, two plates, two
knives, and two spoons. If there had only been a bed in it, one
need not have bothered about hotels at all.
