Show 7 STREET SCENES IN BERLIN N jfe 04 f 4 g V IF it t I 1 1 ak t T 4 in 4 I 1 unter den linden all ali dressed up interesting sights for the visitor in the handsome capital of germany prep prepared ed by national geographic society Iv washington ashington D C service ESPITE the rapid pace D of politics in berlin today pedestrians on the streets of the german capital ia are conspicuously unhurried motor traffic on the other hand is unusually rapid the drivers of the omnibuses omni buses hurl their two storied levia thans from stop to stop in lurching bursts of speed the air brakes hiss with splenetic suddenness the comparatively small number of motor vehicles in berlin helps explain the appearance of most streets counting private cars trucks and motorcycles registrations for 1936 showed only a few more than forty thousand the traffic flow has a heartbeat of 30 seconds half a minute of red light an orange flash of warning of change followed by half a minute of green to one accustomed to the longer intervals of most american cities it seems at first a little hysterical in its frequency of interruption upon arrival one is petrified to see autos passing stopped streetcars the law however permits such passing with the injunction that it be performed with extreme care look out tor for the cyclists the large number of bicycles on berlin streets creates an additional hazard for the motorist especially as the riders seem endowed with a sublime faith that the vagaries of their delicate vehicles will be unfailingly observed by truck and car behind yet with it all casualty statistics are not high the cites fatalities from traffic accidents accidents totaled for 1935 the traffic lights halt squads of cyclists girls in unbecoming but practical divided skirts delivery boys carrying bundles bigger than themselves tenders of street lights pedaling precariously from lamp to lamp with eight foot ladders strapped to their shoulders the berlin resident receives four deliveries of mail a day on weekdays and one on sunday for good measure five thousand postboxes post boxes announce their presence on street corners with a lustrous surface of red that shade which someone has described as the color of audacity until within the last year they were a sober blue but the color experts announced that they lacked visibility special delivery obtains but for those who desire extra rapid service there is the fast functioning pneumatic tube system reaching every section of the town this is a convenience to the businessman and an undoubted blessing to exigent lovers any amy list of the cites a skyscrapers ky scrapers should include the new home of the karstadt department store columbus haus on platz and the handsome white building of the shell oil company which rises from the verdant bank of the spree in mid city are other contenders for dizzy honors and neither exceeds ten stories berlin is not suffering fro from m lack of educational institutions with its 13 universities colleges and higher technical centers high schools and grade schools university once a palace berlin frederick william university ver sity C enter center of educational life fronts on unter den linden across f from rom the state opera house such a dignified atmosphere of scholarship pervades the lovely gray building and its linden shaded court that no one would suspect it was originally built a as s a palace tor for prince henry by his brother frederick the great in the neighborhood of the university are several res restaurants restaurant ts where one hears more english spoken than german the guests are principally exchange professors from american colleges who come to berlin a for research the Schwa ferkel black pig is popular with the teaching fraternity and is the locale for all meetings of the berlin harvard club tonndorf is another spot where the pedagogues gues exchange shoptalk over their veal cutlet and beer modernism is not aggressively present today in painting and sculpture the windows of the moderate i price art shops are filled with decorative prints and paintings designed largely to please the conventional taste scenes portraying fecund gra infields mountain peaks piercing the upper ether animal pictures flower studies predominate only a few doors from the american acan consulate in bellevue strasse street of the better art dealers there has recently been opened an exhibition of the latest styles in modern furniture designs compare favorably with similar showings in other european countries ingenious use is being made of magerl materials als hitherto unknown to furniture making has as anyone ever regretted the demise of a statistician once wrote a disgruntled epigrammatist comprehensible point of view but there are exceptions what berlin eats and drinks at the head office of the cites bureau of statistics you find the chief a person of considerable humor surrounded by diagrams and graphs he can feed you with such factual morsels as the following seven hundred and twenty thousand loaves of bread go each day to berlin homes tons of coffee made from malt are drunk each year and only two thirds as much real coffee some people annually visit berlins movie houses meat consumption is on the downgrade down grade having dropped in one year from to pounds per person beer con consumption has shrunk 40 per cent in the last eight yea years rs a fact of much significance as shadowing foreshadowing fore the physique of the future berliner apropos of beer it is interesting to discover that munich now the nations beer capital originally was the center of a wine country and learned the brewing art from northern germany now however t the he youth of germany striving for physical efficiency scorn anything but the most moderate m beer drinking they predict that paunchy waistlines waist lines and bulging necks will be unknown to the next generation A characteristic sight as one explores the various sections of berlin is the sport fields with children or yo young ung people going through set ting up exercises with magni magnificent fi gusto they bend and twist flexing muscles in unison with the rhythmic counting of physical instructors tors there are of these fields scattered about the city and in addition indoor gymnasiums every german boy regardless of SOC social ial position must between seventeen and twenty five years of age give six months of labor service to the state there are 1200 camps throughout germany with workers to a camp irrigation of dry lands and swamp drainage are the exclusive tasks of these labor camps no road making or other form of construction which could compete with paid labor girls volunteer for work service from the girls of germany is not obligatory however it is the vogue to volunteer for such tasks as assisting workers in the fields or in the homes caring tor for children or substituting for an office or factory worker so that person can take a vacation without pay stores are bedecked bedecker be decked with announcements of autumn sales windows teem with merchandise including conservative copies of paris models to sell to women with small incomes most of the people on be berlin alin streets are well dressed if that term can be interpreted to mean the wearing of good and comfortable clothes mens furnishing stores exhibit weird arrays of caric caricatured attired dummies attenuated and globular clad in coats a as s s square quare built as a new england w woodshed oo 00 dished the sales salesman man explains that this rectangular gugare effect is the american shoulder beauty parlors flourish a bewildering assortment of jars set forth in their windows A few of the better known american commet cosmetic tic lines are to be found |