The Birmingham age-herald., 1921-11-06

BIRD means as long as todays quotations last that you can buy nearly everything at less than half price, if you have dollars to spend. Your room at the hotel which used to cost you 200 marks or per haps S3 a day, is still 200 marks but those 200 marks now cost you at the exchange office only about $1.
 Your lunch check. at first class restaurant, may include such items as these: Soup. IS marks (sc); fish. 25 marks (12hc); roast with vege- tables 40 marks (20c); apple tart, 6 marks (Sc).
 Wine List An Example
 Or take the wine list Some of the Berlin restaurants have very fine French wines that are almost im- possible to get in France. One req son is that France had several mill lion well paid American soldiers on her soil for a year or more and it is said they were prone to order the best wines on the list, no matter what the cost especially on pay days You frequently get inferior wines in France at very superior prices these days But the Berlin cellars, well stocked before the war. are well stocked today.
 Two months ago, these old French wines were dear. Today you get a bottle of superb old Bordeaux or Der gundy, of incomparable vintage, for $1 or $1.50. You could not touch if in a French restaurant for less than thrice the figure. With your coffee (which Is terrible in Germany you will require a glass of fine old brandy to destroy the taste. The most you can pay at the Adlon-the best Der lin hotel-is IS marks, or about 9c drink.
 Going through the shops, you can buy your wife fur coat for $50 or $60. which travellers attest would cost s200 in New York. Expensive gloves of the latest mode may be priced at 90 marks, or less than soc but that is high-you can get very nice ones for a quarter. Jewelry is plentiful and diamonds are procur- able at half the price. weight for weight. that you will be charged in Paris or Chicago.
 Perhaps the most remarkable fact is that gold bags. purses. cigarette cases and the like are often to be found just at the present moment for less than their coinage value. The United States mint would give you 'fSA NtieAh JOu DdiQ TUT lHeIn.
 Buyers Blocking In
 The natural result of all this ie that buyers are Hooking into Ger many and snapping up everything. This means that the present prices VIII not last long. As soon as the retailers perceive that their next purchases are going to cost them twice as much as their present stocks they will have to shove prices up.
 Despite the high tariffs in vogue since the war. 1t Is cheaper to buy most goods in Germany and pay the duty than to buy them in France. German cameras. for instance, retailL ing at 1000 marks Approximately soo sell in Paris for 300 francs. or more than three times as much.
 A striking illustration of the dif- ference in price levels between France and Germany is offered Ato travellers on the dining cars. The in- ternational expresses between Paris and Cologne. for example, carry through diners. You have lunch in France and dinner in Germany, or vice versa. depending on which way you are going. All the meals are served in the same car. from the same kitchen with the same cooks and same walters, and very often with identical menus. The only diff ference is that in France a meal costs 10 francs and in Germany 40 marks, or francs.
 But in this ointment of low Ger man prices there has been one big black fly for a visitor to Berlin the walters strike. Trouble had been brewing among hotel employees for many months. They had long been highly dissatisfied witch the condi- Df x.t>1s. walked out fairly unanimously.
 Camp Out at Hotels.
 The result has been that in nearly all the Berlin hotels you have had to camp out, make your own bed and sweep your own room. The elevator has run only spasmodically and gen- orally when some cnterprisng guest with penchant for mechanics has undertaken to run it himself. There has usually been a cook of some sort to stir up a dish of hash in the kitch- en, but you have had to serve. your self at the table as in a cafeteria.
 Some of the hotels closed down en- tirely. taking advantage of the op- portunity to redecorate and refurnish They claim that the strike was well come so far as they were concerned. Many of the restaurants did like wise.
 The only one of the big hotels that met the strikers demands and to give approximate service was the Adlon, where many of the allied diplomats lived. But unless you are known there and telegraph in advance you won't get a room.
 And the service at the Adlon Is strangely changed. For one thing. the walters, when they struck, did not demand merely higher pay. They de- manded the abolition of the tipping system. Most of them are independ- ent socialists and communists, and their contention is that tips are de- grading. However, there are few that have no such scruples. though 1t is hard for the inexperienced trav- eler to know when to offer . tip and when not. Some of the walters will accept gratuities openly; others only when they are sure none of their