May 10th.—Reached Griazi at noon. Sleep in the sleeping-room, and after a bath leave at half-past six P.M. We have with us sheets, pillows, and blankets, and at eight P.M. we all go to bed, undressing and making ourselves quite at home. Start at midnight.
May 11th.—Arrive at Orel ten minutes to nine A.M. Drive round town with “Charlie” and A⸺ in droschy. Buy a gilt silver salt-cellar of Moscow work. Nothing to see in the town, which seems well-to-do and substantial. Get a bath, or rather wash, and four hours’ nap in the waiting-room. Leave at three P.M. Carriage to ourselves.
In this part of Russia a train consists of one first-class, one second-class, and, say, fifteen third-class carriages. We find that it suits us to go first, as we can lie down and go to bed, which is of great moment in so long a journey. All the seats draw out to form beds, and the carriages are lined with velvet, have double windows, and every comfort on board. Pace, twenty miles an hour. No charge is made for the children! Witebsk at eight P.M.
May 12th.—Dunaberg at half-past five A.M. Here we find a wretched station and buffet. They try to persuade us to go to an hotel. We breakfast at the buffet, and then go by rail some two miles, to the Dunaberg station of the Warsaw-Riga line. This move was an inspiration. Here we found a really magnificent station and buffet. Nothing leaves till to-morrow at half-past three A.M.—an unearthly hour. We dine at the buffet, and take one of the bedrooms in the station provided for travellers by the Russian Government. We get a magnificent appartement for three roubles, with two beds! with blankets and pillows and a sofa. Fortunately, the beds are in alcoves, so I take the sofa, and we all sleep till three A.M. of the 13th. We get up, go down to the station, and at twenty minutes past four A.M. (awful time) start for Berlin.
Arrive at Wilna at eight A.M. Get to Eydtkuhnen, the Prussian frontier, at eighteen minutes to two. Here a form of custom-house examination is gone through. Leave at twenty-two minutes past two, and reach Berlin on May 14th at ten minutes past six A.M.
We are all dog-tired, dirty, woebegone in the extreme, our luggage eccentric-looking; and on our arrival in the Hôtel de R⸺, Unter den Linden, a new and handsome building, we humbly ask for rooms in French. The head waiter patronisingly informs us that he hopes to give us rooms, and informs the manager in German that we may be put anywhere.
We are taken into the lift and brought to the third floor. Two good rooms are shown us for six and a half marks each room—in all, with extra, i. e. children’s beds, fifteen marks.
When the head waiter sees our piles of luggage arrive, and is asked for hot coffee, he becomes polite and servile, and tells us he can give us better rooms on the second or first floors; but we decline to move, sleep being our first object. We do sleep, but miss the vibration of the carriage. We go to the table d’hôte, and, as we dread strange liquors, order a bottle of a well-known brand of dry champagne. It appears without label and without cork carefully frozen. The head waiter glides up, and remarks in English—
“You will find this a ver fine wine, sar.”