Show STREET SCENES IN BERLIN 11 k aff D R 1 W f unter den linden all dressed up interesting sights for the visitor in in the handsome capital of germany PrepA prepared redby by N national geographic society washington D C se service r vice ESPITE the rapid D DESPITE pace pac of politics in berlin today pedestrians on t the he streets of the german capital are conspicuously unhurried motor traffic on the other hand is unusually rapid the drivers of the omni buses hurl their two storied leviathans levi athans 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 amerlean 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 for the cyclists the large number of bicycles on berlin streets creates an additional hazard for the motorist espee especially lally 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 ara not high the cites fatalities from traffic accidents totaled tor 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 oae on sunday tor 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 oata obtains ins but for those who desire extra rapid service there is the fast functioning 9 pneumatic tube system reaching every see section of the town this Is a convenience to the businessman and an undoubted blessing to exigent lovers any list of the cites skyscrapers skyscraper s should include the new home of th 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 from 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 center of educational life fronts on unter den linden across from 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 as a palace tor for prince henry by his brother frederick the great in the neighborhood of the university are several restaurants where one kears hears more english spoken than german the guests are principally exchange professors from amerlean american colleges who come to berlin for research the Schwa ferkel black pig is popular with the teaching frate fraternity mity and is th the e locale for all meetings of the berlin harvard club To Tomi dort 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 price art shops chops are filled with decorative prints and paintings designed largely to please the conventional taste scenes portraying fecund oun d gra infields mountain peaks piercing the upper ether animal pictures flower studies predominate only a fe few doors from the american I 1 lean consulate in bellevue strasse street of the better art dealers there has recently been opened an exhibition of the latest styles in modern modem furniture designs compare dav favorably orally with similar showings gg I 1 in n other european countries ingenious use Is being made of materials hitherto unknown to film furniture iture making has anyone ever regretted the demise of a statistician once wrote a disgruntled epigrammatist comprehensible point of 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 consumption has shrunk 40 per cent in the last eight years a tact fact of much significance fl cance 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 the youth of germany striving for physical efficiency scorn anything but the most mo moderate 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 young people going through set ting up exercises with magnificent 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 social lal 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 camp campano sno no road making or 0 other th e r form of construction which could compete with paid labor girls volunteer for or work service from the girls of germany Is not obligatory however it is the vogue to volunteer tor for such tasks as assisting workers in the fields or in the homes caring for ch chidden idren or substituting tor for an office or factory worker so that person can take a vacation without pay stores are be decked with announcements noun cements 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 berlin 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 caricatured dummies attenuated and globular clad in coats as square built as a new england woodshed the salesman explains that this rectangular effect Is the american shoulder dor Beauty parlors flourish a bewildering assortment of jars set forth in their windows A few of the better known american cosmetic lines are ara to be found |