WINTERREISE NIPPING and eager, the air bites shrewdly and the snow and the wind have obliterated all the details of the journey to Munich. Snow is still falling hard when the scene clears in the late afternoon. At the Poste Restante counter of the Hauptpost, they handed over a registered envelope crossed with blue chalk; inside, stiff and new, were four pound notes. Just in time! In high spirits I headed for the Jugendherberge—one of the very few Youth Hostels that still survived—where the magic word ‘student’ secured me a bed in a long empty dormitory. I had just placed my rucksack and stick on it in sign of possession when a depressing-looking and pimply newcomer entered and staked a claim on the next bed; infuriatingly: all the others were free. Worse, he sat down, bent on a chat and I was longing to see the town: I had a special goal in view. I made some excuse and dashed down the stairs. * * * I soon found myself battling down an avenue of enormous width that seemed to stretch to infinity across the draughtiest city in the world.
