Owing, however, to the uncertainty as to the route which I hey were to follow, M. Bering assembled a naval council on the 4th of May, 1741, and it was resolved to endeavour first to discover the land of Don Juan de Gama, a fatal resolution which was the cause of all of our disasters. The 4th June we put to sea. M. Bering had on his vessel, sent by the Academy, an adjutant, M. Steller, physician by profession, but above till well versed in all that pertained to natural history. M. de la Croyere was with M. Tschirikow. Although M. Bering and M. Tschiri­kow were not to separate, according to their instructions, they could not avoid it, for eight days after sailing they were separated by storms and fogs. The search for the best accommodation caused them to direct their course southeast ; they continued to sail in that direction as far as the 46th degree without, however, finding the slightest vestige of it. They then changed their course to the northeast and both reached the coast of America, but in different places and without knowing of the whereabouts of the other.

M. Bering and we who accompanied him saw land for the first time after being six weeks at sea. We then calculated that we were about five hundred Dutch leagues from Avatscha. We pro­vided ourselves with fresh water. We saw indications of inhabitants, but could perceive no one. After being at anchor three days, M. Bering con­sulted with his officers, and it was resolved to return. The 21st July we weighed anchor before sunrise. There was nothing to do but to follow the coast, which stretched westward; but navigation was seriously em­barrassed by frequent islands, and when we tried to put to sea we were met by storms and contrary winds, which caused us new delays every day. In order to procure fresh water, we returned towards the coast, from which we had kept as far as possible. Soon it was in sight, seem­ing about ten miles distant. We anchored between the islands, and the one where we landed was Schoumagin-Ostrow. The water was good, but although taken from a lake, there was, nevertheless, some sea water in it brought by the tide, which sometimes inundated the island. Afterwards we felt disastrous effects from its use, in sickness and the loss of several of our men, who died. We tried in vain during three or four days to discover some natives of the country, whose fires we could see at night on the coast. The 4th of September these savages finally came, of them­selves, in little canoes, and; having announced their arrival to us by a loud cry, they presented us with their calumets, in sign of peace. These calumets were sticks with the wings of falcons attached to the end. We understood from their gestures that they were inviting us to come on land in order to furnish us with provisions and fresh water.

A TRAM ride distance from this modern horror, we came to an East Berlin where time might have stop­ped 5o years ago. It is a world of farmland and small villages, narrow streets lined with gabled, red-brick houses. Well within the city limits, there arc woods opened by too miles of walking trails, lakes and streams. Sparse road traffic contributes to the rural illusion. Because of high prices and scarcity, only one East Berliner in seven owns a car (in West Berlin one in four owns a car).

Berlin once had more bridges than Venice, more statues than Rome. The post-war division left most of these in East Berlin—the old capital’s Mitte, or city centre. In so far as it suited the prevailing ideol­ogy, historic monuments have been carefully restored—augmented with appropriate statuary from the pan­theon of Marxist heroes. With good luck—and the expenditure of mil­lions of marks—the GDR recovered many of its war-scattered art trea­sures and rebuilt its bomb-ruined museums. Today, they do spectacu­lar public-relations work for the re­gime, attracting some 3•r million visitors a year.

Theatre and opera flourish, too. The Berliner Ensemble, directed by Bertolt Brecht until his death in 1956, carries on with regular produc­tions of the master’s work, some of which would never be tolerated in Moscow. But the ornate pride of cultural East Berlin is the restored State Opera, where on any given evening there are hound to be seen leaders of the communist world.

The ordinary business of day-to-day living in East Berlin, however, poses quite a contrast to this gran­deur. Shuffling lines, rubber stamps pounding the state’s sanction on to countless forms—these are charac­teristic sights and sounds in the city. With housing still in short supply, a bachelor is unlikely to gain government approval for his own apartment, even if he has managed to find one. A Party bureaucrat, on the other hand, is apt to be assigned one on the fashionable Karl-Marx­Alice; the more resonant the title, the larger the apartment.

To a citizenry that has had the virtues of the classless society drummed into its ears for three dec­ades, the zeal with which the gov­ernment favours those already pri­vileged is a constant irritant. Rail­ing against bourgeois consumer values, but needing freely convert­ible currency for foreign trade, the regime has set up a chain of “Inter-shops.” They sell imported coffee, jeans, even cars to those who can pay in the hard cash of the West.

This has led to deeper class divi­sions between those who have access to “hard” currencies—mainly East Berliners who have contact with Western visitors or relatives over the Wall—and those without hope of ever seeing any. So galling is this discrimination that workers in an electrical factory demanded recent­ly—in vain—that 20 per cent of their wages be paid in West Ger­man currency. Although the state feigns a one-to-one exchange rate be­tween the two German currencies, money-changers in West Berlin will give you four East-marks for one West-mark.

Meanwhile, East Berliners can tune in to West German television—as virtually all do—and see a world where people say what they please, go where they choose and, since their streets are jammed with cars, must obviously not have to wait for up to six years to buy one.

The Wall has done its job—es­capes are rare—but dissent is rising. Thousands of ordinary citizens have applied for permission to emigrate to the West. Risking grave conse­quences, and with little, if any, chance of state approval, they have made a statement about the conduct of their nation’s affairs in the only way open to them.

So while the theatres and restau­rants are full, and the remade city is bright in the winter sun, the mood of the average East Berliner is sombre. A map of his city shows only a white void beyond the Wall. He can look at the famous world clock in the Alexanderplatz and see the exact time in countless cities he will never be able to visit. And he knows that the decisions most affect­ing his life are made in Moscow. There are 400,000 Soviet troops on East German soil to assure his compliance.

But soaring up and away from this dreary scene is a sleek symbol of Communist Germany’s reborn capital city : a 1,200-foot television tower, one of the tallest in Europe. In a stainless-steel sphere two-thirds of the way up, ‘those who have braved the queues for a lift dine in a revolving coffee shop and gaze into the forbidden realms of the West. (From their side of the Wall, West Berliners are delighted to see the setting sun reflected as a huge gold­en cross on the sphere; they call it “the Vatican’s revenge.”)

To the Party faithful who come to the sundered city from the East, however, the tower is a glory and a marvel, and so is everything it looks down on. In the eyes of a visiting Czech or Pole, East Berlin is the shopping centre of the Soviet bloc. When my wife and I visited East Berlin last winter, a Romanian told us : “The West is forbidden, and to go from Bucharest to Sofia is only more of the same. But to come to Berlin is to live a little.”

Having led the German Demo­cratic Republic to a place among the world’s top ten industrial nations, East Berlin is by far the most cosmopolitan city in Eastern Eur­ope. Its great pre-war museums and world-famous theatres have been meticulously restored; Alexander­platz, just east of the old city centre, was rebuilt and is now a giant oval rimmed by skyscraper hotels and glossy department stores full of fash­ionable clothing and electronic gad­gets. Where the Linter den Linden ends at the River Spree, the castle of the Hohenzollern kaisers was torn down to make room for a colossal new civic centre of marble and glass. It houses a 5,0oo-seat congress hall as well as the chamber of the GDR parliament, a dozen restaurants and bars, a discotheque, theatre, art gal­lery and several saunas.

At least half of East Berlin’s million citizens live in housing built since the war. Cost for a new four-room apartment : £30 a month. A working widow we met lives in a smaller, older, but completely reno­vated apartment, and her rent is Liz a month. She is grateful for the material security provided by the state: “There is no unemployment here; my retirement pension is assured and the best medical care costs me nothing. I’ll never be a bur­den to my children.”

“If you could ask one more thing of the government, what would it be?” I asked. We were standing by the Pariser Platz. A few yards be­yond, the 4-foot-high concrete Ber­lin Wall cleaves the city in two. It answered my question before she did, for one needs to be in East Berlin only a short time to see that the heavily guarded Wall is the cen­tral fact of life here, built not to keep Westerners like me out, but to keep people like her in.

Finally she spoke : “I would ask the same as everyone else—to be trusted, to be free to visit the other side, to travel.” She lowered her head. “Just to be free,” she said.

FOR foreigners journeying by road or barcelona travel the only openings in the roo-mile­long barrier surrounding West Ber­lin are three control points—two of which, Bravo and Charlie, arc manned by the Western allies. My wife and I turned into the Friedrich­strasse one morning and drove past the three whitewashed military sheds known as Checkpoint Charlie. We passed at once from the Amer­ican sector into a chilling world where the street name remained the same but everything else abruptly changed.

We were in the East German control point, a 9o-yard-wide no-man’s-land studded with tank traps. and a maze of breast-high road blocks. Green-uniformed Volkspoli­zei (People’s Police) patrolled with loaded sub-machine guns. We knew the guns were loaded; since the Wall went up in 1961, at least 70 East Germans have been killed try­ing to get across.

Our passports were checked exception. Forty minutes after crossing, we were free to drive on.

BERLIN has been divided by the Wall for 17 years, but its history as a single city goes back seven centur­ies. Time and again it has been test­ed in adversity—never more severe­ly than in the Second World War, against the GDR “enemies” list. We paid the equivalent of around ,£2.50 for two visas valid until midnight, the same for road tax, and had to exchange a minimum of something like L3 for East German money (this to be spent before we returned, or surrendered). Finally, a sullen youth went through our car looking for books, magazines, newspapers. Much of what is printed in the West is deemed propaganda, hence verboten (banknotes are one

Afterwards, the survivors—women, children, old men—took up shovels to clear away 100 million cubic yards of rubble.

Even when the reconstruction of the rest of the city had been com­pleted, the area around the Pariser Platz—considered the most valuable piece of land in East Berlin—was grassed over and left bare. Here had stood the proudest buildings of the pre-war city—the Reich Chancel­lery, the Adlon Hotel

Routes and Fares: The air journey via India (about 24 hours) costs £640 return 1st class, £374 tourist and £311 3rd class. Round-trip fares from U.K. and west European ports for the 30-40 day voyage each way are £320 minimum 1st class and £220 tourist class.

Information: Government Public Relations Office, Gloucester Building, Hong Kong.

COLMAR (France)

Routes and Fares: Colmar is reached by train and boat via Paris and Strasbourg, £15 16s. return 2nd class. Air fares via Paris are £37 4s. return 1st class and £27 tourist: total time about 5 hours from London. Air fares via Basle are £37 16s. return 1st class and £30 5s. tourist, saving about one hour.

MOROCCO

Routes and Fares: Air fares to Tangier direct from London are £75 12s. return 1st class and £56 13s. tourist class: to Casablanca £81 8s. and £65 18s. This can be reduced by taking a night tourist excursion (one year) return to Gibraltar at £30 10s. and travelling on to Tangier for £3 16s. return and from Tangier to Casablanca for about £7 15s. return. The rail, sea and coach journey to Gibraltar through Spain costs roughly £30 return 2nd class. The cheapest return fare to Gibraltar by sea, tourist class, is a little under £30, and the sea crossing to Tangier costs only 27s. each way. Southampton-Casa­blanca fares by sea range from £44 (November-June only) or from £75 for the Greek Line’s round trip via Madeira and the Canaries. Marseilles-Tangier by sea costs £28 return 2nd class and £40 1st class; from Bordeaux £33 tourist and £42 cabin class. There are also ferries from Algeciras and other places in Spain to Tangier, Ceuta, etc., and an excellent car ferry from Gibraltar to Tangier.

Formalities: Passport and smallpox vaccina­tion. Motorists need international documents.

Accommodation: There are luxury hotels in Tangier, Casablanca and Marrakesh. Even small places have clean, cheap hotels; skiing hotels and Alpine Club huts are simple but good. £2-3 a day should provide sound accommodation.

There are many French-pattern camping-sites. Information: Moroccan National Tourist Office,Wingate House, Shaftesbury Avenue,

NEXT SUMMER

The brief notes that follow are intended to give some idea of the holidays offered by tour operators. Additional information will be in­cluded in the February number. Prices with air travel are given in italics, and all prices are the cheapest offered for a fortnight’s holiday (14­16 days) with travel and full board unless other­wise stated. It should be remembered, of course, that the cheapest is not necessarily the best buy. Apart from standards of accommodation there can be great variations in what the price includes. Alpenland Travel Bureau: Specialists in Austria; agents for provincial government of Styria. Austria (£35), Belgium (£28), Denmark (£41), Germany (£39), Finland (£70, (£80, France (£30), Ireland (eight days, £33), Italy (£42), Holland (nine days, £30), Sweden (£6l), etc. Anglo-Yugoslav Travel Service: Yugoslavia (294 gns, 39 gns), Yugoslavia, South Italy and Greece (494 gns), Greece (139 gns), Italy (44 gets). School parties to Yugoslavia (244 gns).

Bergen Line: Twelve-day tours to Norway (from £33). Educational holidays (geography, botany, etc., £40). Coach tours (from £47). Itineraries and reservations for car tourists (from £50). Special trains, including car sleepers from London and Edinburgh, connect with Bergen Line steamers. Prices from Newcastle. Bland Line and associated companies: One-, two-, three- and four-day tours of Tangier and Morocco from Gibraltar or Tangier (£2 5s. to £18 each for two people).

C.H.A.: Non-profitmaking. Guest houses in many parts of Britain (£6-8 a week). Mountain­eering, pony-trekking, drama, painting, photo­graphy, etc. Austria (£32), France (£25), Ger­many (£33), Italy (£32), Spain (£28), Switzerland (£35), U.S.S.R. (£65). Walking tours in Austria, Luxembourg, Yugoslavia, etc.

Contours: U.S.S.R., Leningrad and Moscow (65 gns, 78 gns; 59 gns for May-Day trip), 13-day cruise to Leningrad (43 gns), 21 days to Venice, Durazzo (Albania), Piraeus, Istanbul, Black Sea resorts and Moscow. Also tours to Central Asian republics and other remote parts.

Cyclists’ Touring Club: Non-profitmaking. Cycle tours (parties limited to 16) in mountains of Austria, France and Norway (£40).

To make your scouting adventure light and easy, take some time to check out some websites that carry lists of London budget restaurants and of the luxury and expensive entries. Trip Advisor is particularly a good site where you can select the filter for “budget eats” and see listings of restaurants in line with customers’ reviews or look for Dubai apartment. The site is helpful too with the availability of map for each restaurant. This site also makes recommendations for dining options, reservations and entrees and the price. Maps are provided to give you exact locations and landmarks to look for in easy read and understand notes. It is also a good site for availing good London deals for hotels and all travel offers.

A good book from Timeout called “Cheap Eats in London” which you can find easy in many book shops around some towns is a handy reference to find your good place to eat. The book’s last ten pages have maps of different local towns indicating each restaurant per locality and allow you to have easy time finding your good choice.
Meanwhile london-eating.co.uk has listing of budget restaurants in London and gives you enough time to scan and to help yourself surfing from one area to another to find your place to eat. It also lists about what good foods, hot venues, kid friendly, outdoor or those just for quick bites. It also has listings for romantic, special occasion likes weddings and birthdays and what’s coming and new offerings and then you settle for the one that fits your style and preference.
Hunting for London restaurants to eat for heart’s desire can be as easy and relaxing when you have a London map you can buy easily in bookstores around London or directly from the airport that allows travelers to move around with out the fear of getting lost. You London maps are your passport and access to every London town.

Dining in London is a great experience and finding a good place to eat adds to the good experience. But one mistake can land you to a disastrous dining treat and therefore you must not allow yourself to be push by compulsive actions. Make a plan, make a choice and stick to it and give your dining exploration in London all the best trimmings of a dining holiday.