There are, of course, plenty of suburban cafés open in the summer, but they are more refreshment establishments, and appeal rather to the general public than to the higher class; they are opened or closed according to the seasons.
Bauer's, in Unter den Linden, is also a well-known café, and is much frequented by the Berliners; it is, however, more of the refreshment saloon class, and is patronised by a large newspaper-reading public, from the fact that there are few of the leading publications in all languages that you would fail to find here. This café has become a general rendezvous in the afternoon and evening, and everything supplied there is of the best quality. The walls are decorated with paintings by the eminent German artists of thirty years ago. Upstairs, between 5 and 6 P.M., one sees many of the people of the world of the theatres and music halls.
At Ewest, just off the Friedrichstrasse, there are two or three little quiet dining-rooms. The management is not anxious to find accommodation for any except old customers, but the best wine in Berlin is to be obtained there.
The Kaiserkeller, with its rooms decorated splendidly in various styles, one after the model of the Lübeck Schiffergesellschaft, and others after other famous German rooms, is one of the sights of Berlin. It retains an army of cooks and its wine-list is a wonderful one.
If you wish to see the rowdy student life of Berlin, the Bohemian festivity which corresponds to the life of Paris in the cabarets of Montmartre, and if you speak German, go to the Bauernschänke, which has obtained a celebrity for the violence and rudeness of its proprietor, who, as Lisbonne and Bruant used to, and Alexander does in the cabarets of the City of Light, insults his customers to the uttermost and turns out any one who objects. Die Räuberhohle is an inferior imitation of Die Bauernschänke.
A noted night restaurant is Der Zum Weissen Rössl, in which each room is decorated to represent some typical street in Berlin. This is a hostel much frequented by artists.
CHAPTER VIII
SWITZERLAND
Lucerne—Basle—Bern—Geneva—Davos Platz.