LEGSreunited HOME page Album home Thumbnail page Download image
First image Previous image Next image Last image
No. 5 Gossamer Dec 1938
LEGSreunited HOME page » LEGS Memorabilia » The Gossamer School Magazine » No. 5 Gossamer Dec 1938
05-Gossamer04
Image 4 of 27
P165 Germany 1938
Unchecked OCR:
I have often found it difficult in the last few weeks to
remernber all the Germans who have been kind and friendly to
me. But I have never met with anything but kindness from
them. They found me taxis and porters, and tackled the
Customs for me when I first went to Germany with only half~a-
dozen words of the language, and this year, they mended
punctures for us , turned out of bed to make room for us one
wet night, and valiantly tried to understand me when, as
linguist to the expedition I tried to buy safety~pins, luggage
labels or stoneless raisins. I think my best effort in that line
was when in a cafe I asked for a meringue and got a glass of
hot milk.
Everyone we met was eager to be friendly with the English,
and we found ourselves very popular in Germany, though many
of them seemed to have an idea, which was perhaps iustified by
our behaviour, that all the Eng]ish are slightly mad-headed and
below standard in intelligence. One old lady who showed us
the way in Bonn, took my arm and insisted on guiding me
across the street, and made me promise, when she left us, to
take great care in trafic. And a Storm Trooper in charge of a
Youth-Hostel tried to rake us out of bed at six in the morning,
and when our German conveniently left us, went down to con-
sult his phrase-book and came back pointing to a clock he was
holding, and shouting at the top of his voice, " Eenglish girls,
oop!'' One of our party lost lier Y.H.A. card after a couple
of days on the road so we spent a month explaining her to the
Warden of every Hostel. Some of them greeted us with a
tolerant smile and some with loud laughter, but they were all
obviously prepared for any foolishness from the English.
But they thought us rather unreasonable when we pestered
them in the shops for butter and refused to be satisfied with
margarine. Germans have a butter ration and we found
dif~culty in buying it till we let them know we were foreigners.
Even so they tried hard to persuade us that margarine was
much better and twice as nourishing. That was the only
scarcity we came across, though all prices were very high, and
I was told that cloth was of very poor quality
Photo reference: 05-Gossamer04