Chapter 11: Europe!
When we went home at the end of that tour, we found we had some savings. We bought an old Hatfield Bean car and decided to take a trip abroad. We went to the AA and told them that we wanted to go to Poland, via Belgium and Germany. They could not understand why we wanted to go to Poland, but they made out a route for us, arranged our visas and passports, and put my husband through a driving test for the continental driving licence. We only had a fortnight for the trip because Helen was coming home for her holidays after that.
We started for Dover one fine July afternoon. After passing Hastings, we found a very quiet quay by the sea all to ourselves and decided to have some tea from our Thermos flask. It was a very nice place, we thought, and we were wondering why no one else was there (a little further back we couldn’t find room to put our car: the seafront was packed with buses, taxis, and private cars). Halfway through our tea, we found out why. We noticed a fearful smell, and turning around, we saw a sewage cart being emptied into the sea. We packed up in a hurry and left!
The way from Worthing to Hastings along the seafront was very pretty. It was a lovely afternoon, and the sea was many shades of green and blue. We were excited in anticipation of our trip. We had traveller’s cheques so that we did not have to carry money over the frontiers. It was a very small sum for a long journey, but we thought that with care it should be enough.
We started to economise from the beginning. We went to a cheap little hotel in Dover, which did not provide soap in the bedrooms. We bought some soap (which was very useful, as the continental hotels did not provide soap either). About midnight, we were woken by a couple of drunk men shouting downstairs, but that did not worry us as we had a lock on the door. A little later, they came outside our door and banged it. My husband went out to see what they wanted; the landlord was there too. He said that one of the men had been made to vacate the room for us that afternoon, and now he claimed he had left something in the cupboard. So he told them to come in. They came in and turned everything in the room upside down. They never found anything of theirs, and I was very watchful to see that they did not mistake anything of ours for their own. After half an hour of grumbling, and opening and shutting drawers and cupboards, they went away, and we could sleep again.
In the morning, we got the car, loaded our things, and went sightseeing in Dover. It is an interesting place, and pretty, but nothing like Folkestone. I think Folkestone is the most impressive town that I have ever been through. Such solid, handsome red stone buildings, and everything clean, tidy, and cheerful. I think we will go and stay there when we have our next leave. Then we went to the boat.
I had bought myself a little phrase book for Germany, as neither of us knew German, but in Belgium, we hoped to get by with my husband’s French. We landed at Ostend sometime in the afternoon, and the AA man came to meet us. It did not take long to get the car off the boat and go through all the usual formalities. We drove out of the town very quickly, as we wanted to get to Brussels that night, which is about a hundred miles away. The road was wide and cobbled all the way. The countryside in Belgium is spoilt by huge advertisement hoardings on each side of the road. We went on to Bruges, where church bells were ringing for evening service. It was a very special sound in the evening air.
I don’t remember all the small places that we passed, but I know we went through Ghent and Aalst. All the way, the country was flat, with wide cobbled roads. Sometimes a small railway line would cross the road or run parallel for a mile or two, and often a tiny train drawn by horses could be seen trundling along. We stopped for petrol and oil once and, to our surprise, they understood my husband’s French.
We reached Brussels in the dark and went to the Hotel Cosmopolitain. It was a comfortable place where they provided soap, plenty of hot water in the bathroom, and the cooking was good. We went out to see the city and were favourably impressed. It was very amusing to see Belgian families sitting on the pavements outside hotels and little cafés, drinking their beer or coffee, and listening to music. Parents, grandparents, and many children were assembled round little glass-topped tables, enjoying their drinks, watching the passers-by, and exchanging jokes with the occupants of other tables. Nearly all the women wore black.
Many of these cafés had a concert or dancers on a little stage. As we passed one of them, we heard Ochi Chyornye (Dark Eyes) sung by a woman with a remarkably good voice. We went in and saw a party of Russians on the stage playing and singing. We spent a couple of hours there listening to the wild and sad gypsy music. I went to the leader and asked him for one or two songs that I loved and hadn’t heard since I left Russia. They sang for me, and the audience were very excited and cheered enthusiastically. Several people came and asked me in French to get them to sing some more like that, and the place got packed; they had to bring many extra tables and chairs. The woman we heard first was very stout and had a lovely face with regular features and thick plaits of dark brown hair coiled round her head. Her voice was a deep mezzo-soprano, almost contralto, and when she sang, it made you think that there are some treasures in life worth discovering and some feelings beyond the daily routine.
Ah, she could sing; with notes in her voice that made me see blue waves flecked with white, gently rolling onto the beach and making sighing music over the pebbles, then retreating, only to return. I went back to the hotel full of memories of when I was a little girl, waking in my bedroom. I would rub and breathe on the frosted window to clear a little peephole and was very excited to see the world all dressed in white. The branches of the trees were coated with minute snowy stars, and the roofs of the buildings were fringed with icicle lace that reflected the sun’s rays and showed all the colours of the rainbow. It was a magic world, beautiful, and one to which I would never return.
In the morning, we went to the frontier through Louvain, St. Trond, and other towns whose names I have forgotten. In one small town, we bought some brown bread, smoked salmon, cheese, pastries, and fruit for our lunch and ate it in a quiet, pretty lane. Early in the afternoon, we reached the German frontier, which was in the middle of nowhere with just one or two houses for the customs officials. We were there for about an hour, presumably to make sure that nobody was chasing after us (each time we crossed a frontier, we always had to wait a while). In the end, an officer came and asked us if we had anything to declare, and we said no. After examining our luggage, they gave us a permit to go on.
We went to Aix-la-Chapelle, a very handsome town full of imposing buildings and good shops. We needed to go to the bank to cash some traveller’s cheques. With the help of my little phrase book, I asked a boy the way to the bank. He was very obliging, got on his bicycle, and led us all the way to a busy square where the bank was. We gave him a tip and went on to find our way out of town to Cologne. We had to stop and ask the way several times, and every time there was an obliging youth on a bicycle. Soon we had finished all our small change before we had learned what the coins were. After that, we always stopped where there were no cyclists.
In Germany (if you don’t know the language), we found out that it is much better to ask a woman for directions rather than a man. The women would point straight ahead, or right or left, and that was it. A man would take his hat off politely and say (presumably),
"You go on till you get to the Yellow Cow, then turn to the left or right and go on for fifteen kilometres where there is a bridge; after crossing it, you will see a farm with a broken gate; there will be a turning there, don’t take any notice of it, just go on till you get to the next town, then ask somebody."
He would not move his hands, and all this would be said very quietly and politely, and we would be none the wiser after his directions – we would drive a little further and ask someone else.
After Aix-la-Chapelle, we went through a forest where we stopped for tea. We arrived at Cologne in the evening and inquired at a cake shop about a hotel for the night. They directed us to the "Kaiser Wilhelm," and we took a very big room with a balcony looking onto a little public garden. After our luggage had been brought up to the room and my husband had put the car away, we tidied ourselves and went down into the dining room for supper. We ordered sauerkraut, sausages, and some Pilsner beer; everything was very good. The hotel was very old-fashioned, with huge rooms, and every room had window boxes full of petunias, geraniums, and other gay flowers.
The manager came and, speaking English, asked us if we were well looked after and if we would want anything in the morning. We said we should like a bath and coffee and rolls early, as we had a long journey ahead of us. He said it should be done. After supper, we went out to see the cathedral, but just as we reached the steps, they were closing it for the night. We were very disappointed and had to be content with viewing the outside. It looked glorious in the setting sun. I think the fine stone carving looks best in the evening light; it becomes alive.
From the cathedral, we went to the bridge over the Rhine, which was very close. It is a fine structure and commands a lovely view. We looked down on the tidy little promenades with flower gardens and seats. Many people were strolling and sitting there, and they looked very small from the top of the bridge. Then we went down a quiet street full of old buildings; I think most of them were museums. We wandered about and came into the shopping centre. Some of the shops were still open although it was about eight o’clock. Suddenly a storm broke, with torrents of rain. We dodged from one doorway to another with other people. All the taxis and trams were full, as it was the time when most people were returning home. In the end, we got into a tram that brought us to a square near the hotel.
In the morning, a pleasant young chambermaid came to tell us that the baths were ready. She took my husband first, then returned for me. I was brought into a big room with a bath in one corner; the girl curtsied to me and pointed to the bath. I looked and saw a man in the bath with his back to us. It was my husband; she gave me a towel and left the room. Evidently, they think a big bath is good enough for a family bath.
We had coffee, settled our account, loaded our belongings, and drove away. We bought some fruit, tomatoes, and a piece of cucumber at a little fruit market. The cucumbers in Germany are as much as a yard long, and they were tender too. We bought one home on our return to show to my father-in-law, and he was very much impressed with its size and delicate taste. We had our two Thermos flasks filled with coffee by the hotel, and they packed some sandwiches and pastries for us; we were self-supporting for the day. Nearly all that day we went through agricultural country and woodlands. We passed through many pretty villages where the road twisted round the houses. The inhabitants were busy harvesting, and many times we had to stop to let ox carts loaded with corn or oats pass by.
Bad Wildungen was on our route and is a very charming place with pretty gardens, smart villas, parks, and mineral baths. It is, I believe, very popular with summer visitors from all over the world. Later, we went through Kassel, an industrial town but a clean one. When we came to a big square, we did not see the traffic lights and went through the red light. We were pulled up by a policeman, and he scolded my husband as if he had been a naughty boy who had broken a poor old widow’s window with his ball. We did not know what he was saying, but we must have looked penitent, as he dismissed us without producing his book and pencil. I sighed with relief. I had already imagined ourselves spending the rest of our leave in a German prison, forgotten by the world.
In the evening, we decided to try a country inn for the night. We found a "Gästehaus" outside a small provincial town called Osterode. I went in with my little book and asked for a bedroom, dinner, and breakfast.
I found a phrase in the book: "How much is it, and what are the extras?"
The proprietress could not tell me how much it was, but she took me upstairs to show me the room. It was a big parlour furnished with a mahogany couch and chairs covered with horsehair. There were a lot of little tables with crocheted covers, family photographs, a big mahogany table in the middle of the room, and two beds piled up to the ceiling with cushions and feather mattresses. The room was large and pleasant, so I said we would stay for the night. They brought our belongings in, and out of my little book, I ordered "cutlet," "kartofel," (potatoes) and "compot" (stewed fruit) for our dinner. Meanwhile, we went out to see the little town. It was very pretty with gardens and a stream running down the side of one of the streets, but as we came into the main street, we found the smell overpowering from sewage running in the open whitewashed gutters at each side of the street. We held our noses and went back to the inn very fast. We were lucky to have found a place just outside the town. When we got back, the meal was ready, and it was good. The cutlet turned out to be a pork chop, but though it was a very hot day, we enjoyed it. We were tired after a long drive and went to bed early.
In the morning, when we went down to breakfast, we were greeted in English by the proprietress’s son. As we conversed with him the family stood around us to see whether their son really did know English; they were very proud of him when they were sure that we understood him and he us. At that time, all the youth of Germany were Anglophiles: plus fours were in evidence everywhere. When we asked for our bill, it only came to six marks, although they made us some sandwiches and filled our flasks with coffee. We thought we did not yet understand the money, but all through Germany, in every rural Gästehaus, they charged us the same: between five and six marks. Given that the exchange rate was not favourable to us at that time, we were agreeably surprised that it was so little. (Note: six German marks then would be worth about ten shillings. In 2025 about £40 – £45).
That morning, we started early. We passed a big reservoir and started climbing the Harz mountains. For some time, we met no one, just pines and firs on each side of the road. When we came to a good open position, we got out of the car and admired the view. Later, we passed through some very attractive sheltered valleys with villages nestling in them, and we were very sorry that we had such a short time and had to rush through. I read the map, and as we passed different signposts, I ticked off the places that were behind us and looked for the ones that were further ahead on our route to Berlin.
We passed through Bad Harzburg and were very much impressed with its festive appearance; it is a fashionable resort and lies in a valley surrounded by pine woods. I wish we could have stayed there and explored for a few days. In the afternoon, we came to a very pretty wood full of wild strawberries, and we pulled up to the side and had tea there (which was always coffee on this trip). We had a walk and found a cool stream where we paddled and splashed our faces and hands and gathered some flowers. We came back to the car, rested and refreshed, ready for another hundred miles. The road was wide and good, and my husband drove fast; the car went at sixty-five mph or so for a long time. Then we saw a car coming towards us at a good speed which started to sound its horn. My husband slowed down and pulled in to the edge. The other car slowed down, and as it passed, the driver pointed frantically to the other side of the road. Suddenly it dawned on us that we were on the wrong side of the road! It was the only time that my husband forgot that he should drive on the right, thankfully.
We passed through Potsdam, which is very attractive with pretty buildings and masses of flowers in every window. We went along the motor racing road for which we had to take a ticket. My husband let the car go to see what the old crock would do at her best, and I did not like it. I screamed, and he had to slow down, but not before the car had started to flap her wings like a demented hen.
We entered Berlin late in the afternoon and drove along a wide avenue which brought us to a huge square with magnificent buildings all round, many topped with coloured domes. We presumed that it was the heart of Berlin and of Germany itself. We did not want to stay the night in Berlin, as we were tired and could not be bothered to cope with the traffic, and it was getting late. It was very difficult to get out of the city, and we drove through crowded shopping streets and markets for a long time.
Thirty miles outside Berlin, we found a Gästehaus where we stopped for the night. It was a Saturday night; the parlour was full of country people gossiping happily over their mugs of beer and pipes. The proprietress laid our supper in their kitchen-living room on a large table. It was the usual pork chop and potatoes and a mug of excellent beer. My husband was very much amused at my drinking beer because I never had before and didn’t like it, but the German beer smelled so appetising and I was so thirsty after driving through the long hot days, that the cold iced beer was most refreshing. Our landlord was making a wreath, and with the help of our phrase book, we asked him if someone had died. He replied that he was taking it to the cemetery the next morning to put it on the grave of his brother-in-law. Tomorrow was the day for remembering the dead. We managed somehow to carry on quite an abstract conversation and learned a lot about the family and their neighbours. The inn was a huge place with many corridors leading to simple narrow bedrooms. The furniture in our bedroom was very simple, but it was clean, and the beds were comfortable. All the floors were of white wood and were scrubbed early every morning – what a job!
In the morning, everybody went to the pump in the yard to wash themselves, but we had a jug of warm water brought into our room. When we went down to breakfast, we were conducted to the parlour where the table was laid for four, and a man and a little boy were already having breakfast. He spoke English a little and told us that he was a clerk in Berlin and that he was setting out on a walking holiday with his son. He had been a prisoner of war in England and had many friends there. As a P.O.W., he worked for a year on a farm in Bedfordshire and was treated well by everyone.
We drove through flat agricultural country all morning, then through some pine forest, and early in the afternoon came to the Polish border. The German official was fat and good-natured. After we had waited for about an hour, he examined our luggage, took the number of the car and its chassis, had a little discussion about traveller’s cheques, and then we found ourselves in Poland. We were not free yet, as we had to go to the Polish office. The official there was a nervous man and could not understand why we were visiting Poland. My passport recorded my birthplace as Russia, which worried him, and he suspected some hidden motives. He asked me why I was coming to Poland, and I told him that the country where my home used to be now belonged to Poland, and I wanted to see it.
He brightened up then and said, "In that case, you are Polish!"
I said, "No, I am Russian-born and English by marriage."
This worried him still more, but after talking for a long time, in the end, he let us in.
For a little while, the roads were as good as in Germany, but gradually they deteriorated, and towards the evening, in many places, we were limited to five miles an hour, and the Bean developed that wing-flapping habit that she had tried on the racing track near Berlin. Late in the afternoon, we went through Poznań. It was the first big town in Poland on our route, a clean and orderly place with well-kept public gardens and comfortable-looking houses. It was Sunday; we could not get cash till Monday, and we had very little cash with us (not being allowed to take much out of Germany). We thought that we could find a cheaper place in the country, so we drove on. But the towns became less and less frequent, and the few villages we passed had no accommodations for visitors. It started to rain, and it was getting late. We came to Konin, a small town where we found a hotel and took a room. It was plainly furnished but clean. The hotel porter was a consumptive Russian refugee, and it was quite painful for us to see him bending under the weight of our suitcases. He talked to me in Russian in whispers because he said that no one was allowed to speak Russian, and if he were discovered to be a Russian, he would lose his job.
The next morning, we started on the way to Warsaw. The roads were bad, with soft side tracks on each side for horses and cyclists. About noon, we came to a small town where there was a petrol pump. Our car used a good deal of oil, and we had to stop more often for oil than petrol. There was nobody by the pump, and I went to inquire who owned it in my mixed Polish and Russian. After about half an hour, the man was found, and we filled up with oil and petrol. The man told us that there would not be another petrol station for many miles. It was a very depressing town; there were poor Jews in long, dirty black coats walking about or standing outside their miserable hovels. Everybody looked mournful and dirty.
I said to my husband, "I hope I shall never see this depressing place again."
He said, "So do I! Let's get out of it."
The road became very bad with many big holes, and as the side track looked better, we went on to it. We thought we had solved the problem of the bad road and felt much better. My husband increased the speed to twenty miles an hour, and we had already started reckoning at what time we should reach Warsaw, which was a hundred miles away, when suddenly we came to three ditches right across the track. The first one made the Bean hop and flap her wings; at the second, there was a loud crack, and before we reached the third one, my husband put the brakes on. The ditches were very close together, and it all happened very quickly.
I had an awful, desolate feeling – I should say the same sort of feeling as explorers have when they lose their way and find themselves miles from any help. We knew that there was no town in front of us for many miles, and behind us was only that dreadful place we had been so glad to leave. The Bean looked so pathetic; her engine had come away from the chassis, and water was leaking from the radiator. She looked like a horse that has been raced too hard. We were speechless for a while.
A big flock of geese was being driven past by two boys, and I watched them and tried not to think of our disaster. We had met several flocks being driven to the big towns or into the German markets. This flock must have been several hundred strong. The boys decided to stop to give their birds a rest and to take a look at us. The geese were very well trained, or perhaps just glad to rest. They all went into a harvested field and sat down without any direction from the boys. The boys came to us, and while they were eating their crusts of rye bread, they inspected us thoroughly from all sides. They were very puzzled by the unusual appearance of the car with the engine sitting on the ground. We just sat on the ground and let them talk as if we were corpses.
I knew a little Polish, and I heard one of them say, "They unfasten them like that to let the steam out; these automobiles get very hot and dangerous if you don’t let the steam out sometimes."
The other boy was respectful to his knowing companion and asked many questions about automobiles, and the older boy gave him the wildest explanations on the workings of motor cars.
After a little while, I recovered from the stupor that shock had brought on. I asked the boys if there was a place nearby where the car could be repaired.
They were startled to hear me speak their language, and the older kept repeating, "I thought they were Germans!"
The boys told us that there was an American repair shop in the little town we had just passed. It was eight miles away, and if we sent a message, they would come and fetch the car.
The knowing boy had by now lost that assurance of an authority on automobiles, and the younger one said, "I knew as soon as I looked that it was broken."
We stopped a man on a bicycle going in the direction of the wretched town and asked him to report to the motor repair shop that we needed towing, and resigned ourselves to wait. In about an hour, we saw a little car coming along; it was a Ford with two men in it. They were from the Ford Motor repairs depot, and they told us that we were very lucky to have a breakdown in this place, as there was not another repair shop for a hundred miles each way. I said we would be luckier still if we had not taken this road. One of the men was the engineer in charge of the depot, and the other was the mechanic. The engineer spoke Russian, and that simplified matters, as my Polish was weak. They were very quick about the whole business; they strapped the engine onto the Bean and attached the bean to the little Ford.
The Engineer said,
"You had better come with me, Madam, and my mechanic will go in your car, while your chauffeur will do the steering."
I jumped to act my part, but my husband was not so pleased when I told him that he had been taken for my chauffeur; however, as he could not talk to them, he had to stay a chauffeur until they had repaired the car. I hoped they would do the job much quicker if they thought I was somebody important travelling with a chauffeur. I was doing my part very well and talked to my husband in a very authoritative way. I told him that the man thought that it was most careless on my chauffeur’s part to have run into the ditches without having seen them in time to pull up. I got my revenge on him for having bullied me when he was teaching me to drive. So I had some fun out of it after all.
We were towed through the depressing little place right on to the other side of the town, where they examined the damage that had been done and announced that it would take two days to repair our car. It was a blow, and it took us a few minutes to recover. We had no money; the bank where we could cash our cheques was in Warsaw, and to stay in that depressing place for two days was unthinkable. I asked the engineer to advise me what to do, explaining that as we had crossed the border on a Sunday, we were unable to cash a cheque at Poznań, and since then, we had not come across a bank on our AA list that we could deal with.
He very kindly offered to lend me some money, enough to enable us to get to Warsaw by train. I translated to my husband what I had accomplished because of my honest-looking face. He rudely pointed out that the car was still worth the few złotys that were lent to me for the fare to Warsaw. Of course, he was still feeling sore towards the man that had taken him for my chauffeur.
I pointed out that "The meek shall inherit the kingdom of heaven,"
and he said that as far as he could see, the only way out of Poland was to go directly to the kingdom of heaven! We were both in a vitriolic mood, and flames were shooting to and fro.
We went to the station and waited an hour for the train. When it arrived, it was packed. The only way to get on was to have a strong porter. We found one who fought a way for us onto the train and even got us a seat. I had about two złotys left in my purse, which in English money was about one shilling and six pence; I gave the porter sixpence, which made him very indignant. He said he was not a beggar but a respectable free republican who had a wife and children to feed. When I gave him another of my precious sixpences, that made him very abusive, and he even spoke in Russian, which is a very unusual language to hear spoken publicly in Poland. He did not stop his tongue-lashing until I gave him my last sixpence and turned my purse inside out for him to see that it was empty. He said that people who had no money should not look like wealthy English tourists, spat at my feet, and walked out of the train.
All the passengers in the large compartment stared at us the whole journey to Warsaw. An uncle and nephew on the opposite seat were sympathetic and friendly to us. They were going to Warsaw on business and advised me not to speak Russian to anyone except people I knew, and then only privately. He said that everyone was afraid to be taken for a Russian, and no one would admit that they understood the language. It was too true, as I found later in Warsaw.
We arrived in Warsaw in the evening and went to the hotel that the two men had recommended, where we were given a suite of two rooms: a sitting room and a bedroom. It was an old-fashioned hotel, and our rooms were full of plush-covered furniture, but it was comfortable, and we had electric light. There were hordes of staff everywhere, but I never saw any of them doing any work at any time of the day. No less than four porters were in the entrance hall, but none of them got up and opened the door to visitors; they just sat there and talked. They only opened the door for us when we were going away and even took their hats off, but it was not in keeping with their usual style, and I told them so. We stayed two nights there and explored Warsaw during the day. I am sorry I did not see Warsaw before the war, as it must have been a lovely place when it was prosperous. It is still beautiful, though the stucco is peeling from many of the buildings, and the statues in the public gardens have either fallen down or are standing miserably with broken arms and noses. Their disrepair was accelerated by the weather and by idle boys who walked about in crowds trying to shoot dusty-looking sparrows (when they were not bothering the statues).
The summer theatre must have been a very ornate building, but when we saw it, all the doors were rusting because they had not been painted for years, and the stone decoration was falling all round the building. In the shrubbery, there were piles of broken tables and chairs, and some bits of painted stage scenery and other rubbish. It was a very sorry sight; Warsaw had been called the queen of cities for her elegance in the past. Now the Queen was in dusty rags.
At the bank the next morning, we were agreeably surprised to find ourselves in a building as good as any of London’s wealthy offices. It was like being in a different country. In this massive stone building were solid mahogany doors and expensive furnishings. We saw some lovely fur coats in the shops, but as we did not know how much we would be charged for car repairs, we only admired the furs from the street. We were not as strong-minded when we saw the amber shops – we are both lovers of amber. There were some beautiful strings of beads and other amber ornaments in a great variety of colours: emerald green, jet black, and many shades of yellows and browns from a very pale creamy yellow to a rich dark brown like oak or beech leaves in the autumn. We bought a necklace of lovely brown beads and took two beads off it and had a pair of earrings made at the goldsmith’s across the road. The goldsmith spoke to me in Russian while there was no one in the shop but started talking in Polish as soon as a customer came in.
We went to the picture gallery and saw some wonderful treasures! The Poles are indeed great artists; there were some paintings that were superior to anything I have seen before. One I remember in particular was of a lady in a lilac silk dress trimmed with lace; she seemed to live and breathe. There were hundreds of pictures that took our breath away. The citizens of Warsaw are justly proud of their art treasures. We went to see the old Sobieski Palace, and again we had many things to wonder at and admire. One small hall had a parquet floor made up of thirty-five different woods from all over the world. One of which was our Nigerian "Giginya" palm tree (which gave us an idea: back in Nigeria, we had some furniture made of it; it is black like ebony and streaked with cream). We went round with a group of students, as it was students’ day, and many of them spoke Russian to me and were friendly. We also went for a ride around the town on a tram and over the new bridge across the Vistula. It is a fine bridge, and they are justly proud of it.
On the second day, we rang the garage to see if the car was ready and were told that it would be ready the following day. My childhood home was around a hundred and fifty miles away on the other side of Warsaw, and that was the object of our trip. We inquired about the condition of the roads and found out that they were bad for about a hundred miles all round Warsaw. We also inquired about the trains and were told that there were two trains a week to the place where we wanted to go, but we would have to walk the last thirty miles.
The next day, we left Warsaw and went to collect the car. It was not finished until late in the afternoon, and the cost of repair was much higher than expected. After paying, my husband remarked that the aristocratic part I chose to play cost us a great deal, and we had very little money left to take us home. We had to give up the idea of continuing to my home and turned back by the same road we had come along three days previously. I was bitterly disappointed; after all the preparations we had made and having spent all our small capital, it was very hard to give up at the last, only a hundred and fifty miles away from the home where I used to dream. Now I would have to be content with remembering it as if it were a dream. For a few miles, I had to fight the tears back.
We reached Poznań at ten o’clock that night and found a small hotel. They took us in, and while one man went with my husband to garage the Bean, another took my suitcase, and I followed him upstairs. In the corridors, we passed some unpleasant men and women, and my temper began to rise. The man showed me into the room, and it was the most unpleasant room I have ever seen. There was a filthy bed, a broken chair, a dirty little table, and no curtain on the window. The man left me, and I stood in the middle of the room waiting for my husband to come back so that we could leave the disgusting place.
When he returned, I said, "We are leaving this place; it is impossible to spend a night here. We will just walk out quietly."
He said, "We can’t, I would not be able to find the car. I had to go round all sorts of back streets to get to the garage, and I would not be able to find it without a guide."
He suggested that we go to the proprietor and tell him we did not expect to find anything like that and would go and look for another hotel. He rang the bell, and a sleepy-looking woman came in, dressed in a dirty dressing gown. I told her to bring the proprietor; she went away, and the man came in a few minutes. It was the man that had brought me to the room. I told him that we did not like the place and would he send someone to show us where the car was. He said he could not send anybody as they had all gone to bed. He also pointed out that we should not have come in if we did not like it. I told him that the hall downstairs did not look so bad; it had a nice carpet and was furnished quite respectably, but the room was dreadfully dirty, and I did not like the people whom I had met outside the room. He shrugged his shoulders and said if we did not like it, we could find our car and go where we liked, but he was not going to worry about it. I was in a rage by that time and told him that he was a scoundrel and he should not allow decent people to come into this place, and if he did not bring some clean linen for the bed, we should go to the police station and explain the case. There was a policeman just outside on the pavement, and I said we would not need to go far and would call one immediately. He did not say any more but went out and soon came back with some linen. I told him he could go and that I would do the rest myself. We found the fresh linen was not too clean either, so we put it over the top of the bed cover, put some of our newspaper on top of it, and went to bed in our day clothes, as we did not want to touch anything in the room. We did not sleep as it was too noisy, and the street lamp outside our window lit up the bare room.
As soon as it was light, we went downstairs, paid the bill, and asked the way to the garage. We drove out of town, found a stream, and had a cold bath. We were ready for our breakfast then. We went back to Poznań and had delicious coffee, rolls, ham, and cherry jam in a café, and went on the road again. We came to the German border and passed through more quickly this time; we took the road to Dresden. We had the AA route, and as the roads in Germany have an excellent system of signs, we had no difficulty in finding our way about. The most outstanding town we passed that afternoon was Cottbus – a very pretty place situated on the river Spree. The area all round Dresden stands out in my memory for its beauty, and the country people wear very picturesque dresses. We met some young women on bicycles wearing wide, colourful skirts trimmed with bands of contrasting colours and pretty bodices and headscarves; they looked like fantastic flowers being blown about on the road.
In the late afternoon, as we were speeding along a wide road with golden cornfields on either side, a man stopped us. After a short speech mostly done by gesticulation, we understood that he was asking for a lift, so we showed him our route, and he pointed to the village he wished to reach, about thirty miles further on. We all squeezed in and started carrying on a conversation by means of our hands, the few words we had picked up, and chiefly my little phrase book. We gathered that he was a commercial traveller who walked when he could not get a lift. His merchandise was stationery, buttons, and press studs. He was a pleasant young man, and we were sorry we could give him a lift only a short distance. He alighted at an attractive-looking hotel, and several smartly dressed porters came to the car and started to pull our suitcases out. We had to stop them, as we knew we could not afford to stay in a hotel of that class.
Our new friend smiled at us and said in German, "Good rooms, good beds!"
We shook our heads and went away from temptation; the place looked inviting, and we were tired; also, it was getting dark.
At the next village, we found a Gästehaus that was suitable to our financial position and we decided to spend the night. It was a very rural district, and the village was pretty; the small, unpretentious houses were tidy, and every window had a box with bright flowers. Our bedroom was over the cowsheds, and we heard the cows at night sighing contentedly. The innkeepers were farmers as well, and all the family got up very early to milk the cows. After milking, they had breakfast and went out to the fields to harvest the corn. They brought our breakfast on a tray into the bedroom, and the smell of coffee was delicious. In Poland and Germany, wherever you go, you can be certain of drinking excellent coffee.
We started very early that day and had a long run. We passed many industrial towns, but if there was a factory, it was always hidden in the trees or had a pretty garden and playing fields around it. We passed through the busy town of Würzburg; my husband was a little uneasy about driving through the traffic, but all was well. In the afternoon, we came to Bingen. As we were climbing a steep hill, we were stopped by a man with a camera. He smiled and offered us his card and asked us to pay three marks for some photos, which we did. We took his card and went on, thinking we should be admired on some film; a week after we came back to England, we received a group of six serial photos, not at all flattering, as we were both looking very preoccupied; he had chosen to snap us at a very anxious moment when we were not quite sure whether the Bean would take the hill.
That afternoon, we drove through the Rhine valley, which was delightful. The road in most parts runs along the river, and one can admire the view on both sides of the Rhine. The vineyards on the terraced slopes of the valley looked like tiny shelves of miniature gardens, and the old castles, large and small, sat at the tops of cliffs, making one forget which century we are living in.
After we passed Koblenz, we stopped for the night at a cosy guest house. By this time, we were a little more confident conversing in German, aided by my phrase book; we knew where every phrase in the book was and how to pronounce most of them. The mistress of the house said she did not know how much to charge us, as they had not had anybody staying there for the night before; their customers were local people who enjoyed a mug of beer in the evening.
We told her how much we had paid in other places, and she said in German, "That’s fine with me."
We had the usual pork chop, which tasted different in every location, and cold beer. My weight by this time had increased by about two stone, which alarmed me considerably, but as we were driving on average two hundred miles a day, there was no time for exercise. Every pork chop I had added pounds to my weight. I know now why German women are very plump. In Germany and Belgium, I still compared favourably with other women, but I knew that when we got home, I should have to do some strenuous exercise before I returned to my normal size.
After dinner, it was still light, and we went for a walk with our host’s two children; they were extremely puzzled that grown-up people could not understand what they were saying and tried hard to make us understand them, shouting in their young voices. We just smiled and said Ja to everything they said, and they laughed sometimes. When we came back, we found quite a lot of people in the garden at wooden tables, drinking beer, and they greeted us kindly. Both the proprietors were young and good-looking, and they talked to us for a little while; then we went to bed.
The next day was Sunday, and we crossed the Belgian frontier at noon; we were on a different road this time, further south, which went through Spa. The country is lovely there, quite different from the north on the other side of Brussels. The road ran through forests, then through smart residential districts. Soon after we had crossed the border, we needed some oil. We stopped at a garage and asked for a litre of oil. There was a man and woman in the garage, and we asked the woman if they would take German coins. She said they would and went out to find out how much it would be. When she returned, she said that we owed twenty-three marks. My husband told her she was wrong, as the exchange was fifteen marks to a pound, and we had been spending only one pound a day on both petrol and oil during our long drive. She said she did not know anything about that, but she knew that we owed her twenty-three marks and we must pay that.
It was a hot day, and arguing with her only made us hotter. My husband said we must give her the money and go, but I did not like to give her a present, as she was brazenly taking advantage of our position. I suddenly remembered that we had a spare five-litre tin of oil and had not been able to use it because we had forgotten to bring a funnel. We got the tin out and explained to her that if she would take one litre of it, we would pay her one mark for the trouble of measuring it out. She looked very suspiciously at this one-gallon tin and asked us why we did not use it. We told her that we had no funnel, but they did not believe us. The man went and got a spoon and tasted the oil. I wondered how it should taste, but he seemed satisfied that it was good oil, and they let us go after we had paid them one mark for all the excitement we had caused them.
We came to Brussels early in the afternoon and, after we were installed once more at the Hotel Cosmopolitain, wandered round the town. It was Sunday, and the shops were closed, but the streets were crowded with strolling families. We went to the gardens and the greenhouses, which were very pretty and well kept. Most of the women were stout and wore black clothes. We returned to the hotel, ordered some coffee, and watched the passers-by.
The next day, as soon as they opened the bank, we cashed a cheque and drove to Ostend. Today was the Feast of our Lady, so we were told, and in nearly every town, we either met or followed a religious procession. The little girls were dressed like brides, and each had a basket full of flower petals; they curtsied and threw handfuls of these on the road before the priest. Some of the girls were carrying sacred objects laid out on embroidered silk or velvet cushions. Most of the priests were dressed in white robes trimmed with lovely lace, but one or two had gold-embroidered vestments. It was all very impressive, and as we only had a short run to Ostend, we did not mind being held up. The bells were ringing in most towns, and everyone was dressed in their best clothes and looked very festive. When we arrived at Ostend, we looked for a smaller and hopefully cheaper hotel because after cashing the last of our traveller’s cheques at Brussels, we would have to live most economically if we were to keep our belongings.
We found a square with many taverns, and one of them looked clean and cheerful, so we went in to enquire; they gave us a very nice room with a bathroom. After a cold lunch, we went out to explore. Being a holiday, there were a lot of people on the promenade by the sea. It was a hot day, and we thought a bathe would be just the thing to make one completely happy. We queued to hire bathing suits. A party in front of us were English, typical August holiday people: father in his best clothes, mother in yellow beach pyjamas carrying a leather bag (which must have contained their funds) tightly under her arm, two children (one of each), a nice-looking girl whom the children called Auntie, and a young man who was called Uncle Bert and who always managed to find room next to the young girl and called her "Sis" while looking at her lovingly. The children were very excited, running about and coming to report every new wonder they discovered. All of them had a good length of rock, and were looking at everybody as if they had been in the zoo going round the cages.
The little girl said, "Pa, don’t they really understand what we say?"
The Father said, "Not a word of it, just as if they were stone deaf."
The children wouldn’t believe him and asked their Mother, "Ma, he is kidding us, ain’t he?"
and she said, "No dearie, they know no more of our language than a little baby."
The boy said, "Ain’t they funny, Ma? Look at these two behind us; don’t they look a scream, all yellow and old clothes!"
(Five grains of quinine taken daily on the African west coast does make one look yellow).
The Father stepped in and said, "Don’t get so fresh, children; they can’t help their looks, and as for their clothes, it’s not everybody that can have Sunday clothes as well as a pair of pants for every day; I have to work very hard to give you all these. Wait till you grow up and pay for your own clothes; then you can laugh at other people. They look to me very decent folks, anyway."
The children chewed their rock and looked silently at us; then they heard a horn being blown and got excited again.
"What’s that, Pa?"
"Someone is drowning, I bet!" the father said hopefully, and they all craned their necks to see if anything exciting was happening.
We got the costumes at last and the numbers for the dressing huts and were soon standing in the water with everyone else. There was standing room only, and everyone jumped about, laughed, and enjoyed themselves. There were men in little boats; if anyone tried to swim out of the crowd, the boatmen got alarmed and blew their horns and shoved them back. I found a little place that was not so crowded and tried to swim but had to stop after I had kicked a fat man in the stomach. He was very gallant and apologised very elegantly, bowing deeply almost touching his toes. He went on talking, though I had only said "Pardon!" when I kicked him; he seemed quite satisfied carrying on a one-sided conversation. When my husband came to see if I needed help, the man scowled at him. We said goodbye and went to get dressed. I think the seaside would be much nicer without the people, but then the "landlady" would become extinct, and what would happen to aspidistras and hash? They would cease to exist, and it would be a funny world.
We wandered onto the promenade again to see if we could find some tea. There was one place whose proprietor, in a white apron, was serving coffee. We asked for some tea, and he told us to go to a table on the right, where there were a lot of English people, and wait. The proprietor counted us, and when his huge urn was boiling, he rang a bell and was given a large teapot. Then he called us all and told us to bring our cups. We trooped to the counter and one by one had our cups filled with hot, strong tea. Afterwards, we strolled around the town, then returned to the promenade to sit and watch the people. We counted how many fat women passed and how many thin. The ratio was twelve fat to one thin.
For supper, we went to a place where they had only two things on the menu: pigeon pie and raspberry flan. A man outside was shouting out the menu, and the queue of prospective diners was getting longer and longer. I have never seen such efficient service anywhere before! The tables were glass-topped, and as one became vacant, the waiter cleaned it and laid it in a few seconds, ready for the next six people. All tables started and finished at the same time. There was no fiddling about in that place; they took meals very seriously. There was one old grandfather who ate so fast with his toothless gums and sucked the bones of his pigeon so energetically that I was fascinated and, instead of getting on with my own meal, I watched him. The result was that half of my food was taken away! I wished that I had not been so slow over my meal, as it was excellent.
Afterwards, we went to the little café where we had been entertained previously by the Russian concert party, but alas, we were not so fortunate this time. There was a very energetic pianist who played as if he wanted to knock the stuffing out of the old piano, and the old piano fought back! A very pretty young girl was sitting at the nearest table to the pianist, throwing adoring glances at him, which made him shake his black thatch of hair and bash the piano all the harder.
When we returned to our tavern to sleep, we could hardly recognise it. The front was lit up with red lights painful to the eye, and a gay time was being had by all. A lot of young ladies (quite slim) were dancing and laughing with the men, and everyone was happy. We crept in quietly by the side passage and up the stairs to our room and tried to sleep. We were awake until five o’clock in the morning, as the singing and shouting never stopped. In the morning, the proprietress told us that she came from Brussels for Blessed Virgin’s day to arrange for the jollifications. She said it had been a very successful night, and we readily believed her, but we wished we had not chanced to stay there that particular night.
The crossing was calm, and once again, we found ourselves in Dover. We had our car and the contents ready for inspection and were soon through the customs. The car behind ours, with a father and two sons, was not so lucky, and we left them being very thoroughly examined. We looked either too honest or too shabby because we never had our luggage opened. I wondered if we would be so easily let off if we decided to join the smuggling profession. I think customs men possess a sixth sense that makes people transparent to them.
On the way from Dover to Sussex, my husband made several driving mistakes – mainly driving on the wrong side of the road after every stop. It was very exciting to see the South Downs again, and Arundel looked lovely from the hill as we came down from Worthing. Arundel has not changed in any way since my father-in-law was a little boy (except for the new bridge), and I suppose for many years before that.
We arrived home at ten o’clock that night, and Helen was allowed to sit up to welcome us. She was very jealous that we had not taken her on our trip, but we bribed her with some presents, and she was soon comforted. My in-laws stoutly refused to believe that we had enjoyed our trip or that there is anything worth the trouble of going to see. It was the eve of the village flower show, and they were very much preoccupied selecting the exhibits for the next day.
I think there is more excitement in a village over the flower show than there is in a bargain basement on the first day of the sales. A few days before the show, everyone in the village tries to find out what the others are going to show, and they start paying each other friendly, innocent visits. The conversation during these visits is focussed on the show, but both guest and host are very much on guard and trying not to give anything away. Each pretends to be quite uninterested, saying the weather has been too dry or too wet (as the case may be) and had ruined everything in the garden, and they have nothing to show. However, on the day of the show, the pretence is over, and everyone is busy from early morning, transporting and arranging their flowers and vegetables on tables allotted to them.
The judges’ decisions cause deep and varied feelings. Bad feelings are exhibited most when Mrs. T’s rice pudding (which has a first-class prize ticket on it) is being examined by her neighbour whose lovely sponge cake did not win a prize. You might even overhear something like this: "Well I never, fancy her winning a prize with that! If the judges had tried it, she would not have got the prize; she is bound to have left out the sugar or something. She is a terrible cook; I often smell things burning in her kitchen."
Or make your way to the needlework class, where a group of women will be whispering, "What a shame to make a child of seven do all these fine stitches; so trying to the eyes; I would not make mine sit and sew for hours – flower show or no flower show!"
In another corner of the tent, you will see a few men admiring each other’s vegetables; they are much more amiable, giving each other friendly advice as to when and how deep to sow carrots and how to make runner beans grow straight. The men nearly always look surprised to see a prize ticket on their exhibits, while women are always surprised when they don't see one.
The table decoration class is always amusing to watch. This is always done by the more important ladies of the village, some of whom employ a couple of gardeners, which makes it much easier for them. The feelings of disappointment or pride are much better disguised among these ladies, but they are still there, as you can detect when you hear some extravagant praise by the winner of the first prize for the entry that did not get a prize, and so on.
Nevertheless, everyone gets some excitement out of it, even the vicar, in whose grounds the show is held. He goes about from group to group, making tactful and cheerful remarks that soothe stormy feelings. He goes to the amusements stalls and starts his parishioners on the spending trip around the coconut shies, hooplas, and other innocent and money-earning concerns that the enterprising ladies of the parish organise for the benefit of the flower show fund for the next year.
Usually, by tea time, everybody is forgiven, and the refreshment tent is full of friendly people consuming cakes and tea provided by the village fish shop proprietress. In the evening, boys and girls dance on the lawn to the music of a brass band. Every year, the choice of the band causes great discussion, almost to the point of breaking up the committee meeting. But the Vicar usually steps in at the critical point and points out that the young people are looking forward to it all year, and it would be a pity to disappoint them. Of course, he always enjoys watching the dancers, but that would be a very frivolous reason to put forward. However, the band is engaged every year, and the vicar has his reward, and everyone else has their rewards in various ways.
Helen gets thoroughly exhausted with excitement by the end of a flower show day and empties her money box to the last halfpenny. One year she won a prize with her miniature garden and promptly spent the prize money at threepence a go trying not to fall off an old tricycle (which every year was the main money-earning concern at the flower show). It belongs to an old man in the village who gets a lot of enjoyment from watching young and old trying to ride his wonderful machine that he finds so useful for getting about the country.
All I can say is, as long as English villages have their flower shows, the country is all right; nothing can happen to it. Some people would like to wear black shirts, and others red, but as long as there are flower shows in the villages, everyone is much too busy to bother about the colour of people’s shirts.