NO GERMAN EGGS

Wairarapa Times-Age, 13 March 1939, Page 8

NO GERMAN EGGS

PUZZLE FOR HOUSEWIVES IN BERLIN. SECRET SHOPPING TACTICS. Do German hens lay eggs? This is the puzzle which Berlin housewives are trying to solve. My wife has stood in egg queues dozens of times in the last month, writes a London “News-Chronicle correspondent from Berlin. As a rule, at the end of a 10-minute to half an hour wait, she has obtained two eggs, although sometimes the stock gave out before she reached the head of the queue. But she never got a German egg| She collected Finnish eggs, Dutch, Lithuanian, Hungarian, Argentine, and Bulgarian eggs, some alleged to be new laid, others frankly from cold storage. But she never ever heard of anyone getting a German egg. / If German hens have not gone on strike, what is being done with their eggs? . . , . It is no light task keeping house in Berlin. Not only is there’ the long wait for eggs, but there is the daily pilgrimage to the butter shop for the day’s ration —if you miss a day you cannot get two days’ supply the next time; it is lost for good. Then there are bewildering shortages of all sorts'of things. One day there are no onions, another no- oranges. It may need visits to a doen shops or stalls to get the ingredients for one dish.

There are all sorts of tricks to be learned. You must know never to ask openly for eggs, butter, oranges, or onions if there are none on show. You must buy a few pounds of apples or cabbage or something, and then when no one is looking you open your mouth egg wise and whisper. A mysterious packet is handed to you if you are lucky, and you find when you get home that it has two eggs in it.

Mysterious signs must be learned for other products which are short. But there is one good thing. ■ However great the shortage may be, prices do not vary.

Nor must one get the wrong impression that the German people are starving—there is plenty of food to be had, but one cannot always have just what one wants at the time.

The quality of many goods is also extremely low. Apples, for instance, are to be had in plenty —but small, scrubby-looking fruit which would hardly find a place in the “speckled fruit basket” in a London market are only to be obtained for from 6d to 7d a pound. .

The explanation of this is simple. Germany cannot buy the perfect Canadian, American, or South African fruit as she has not the foreign currency needed, but she gets her fruit by bartering manufactured goo'ds for them, from the Balkan lands.