I'm a simple emigrant, and German service carries centuries-old traditions within it

I recently came across Lady Mary’s travel notes from 1716. Mary Wortley Montagu, a British aristocrat and writer who traveled the world with her husband, a diplomat, and wrote in letters about the culture and daily life of people, not just politics or military chronicles, as was customary at the time. She was also one of the first Europeans to describe the smallpox vaccination. So this educated woman was struck by the “German nightmare.” 310 years have passed; let’s see what has changed. Sleep in the stable. The worst for Lady Mary was in Westphalia. On the journey from Hanover to Cologne she had to sleep in a hallenhaus. These are traditional houses where both people and livestock lived. You open the gates, and there are: on the right horses, on the left cows, in the middle manure, and at the end a fireplace with a family sitting around it. Travelers were sent up a ladder to the attic, right above the stock, and sleep was proposed on straw. Dampness and unsanitation. At that time, windows in German houses were nailed up or sealed with wax for the winter. And they stoked the stoves as if mad, which caused the rooms to be suffocating and musty. In this atmosphere, among straw mattresses, bed bugs and fleas thrived. When she moved into such a dwelling in Leipzig, Lady Mary immediately ordered all carpets and tapestries removed, because she thought there were generations of insects there. Rudeness and slowness of the hosts. German innkeepers and postmasters behaved arrogantly. They were not quick to serve and could say there was no food, and they didn’t care what status a guest had. When Lady Mary tried to complain about the cold and dirt, they told her that this is how it’s done here, and they had no intention of changing anything. One must understand that for a British aristocrat, used to the idea that money can buy anything, including respect, this was a complete shock. Doesn’t this remind you of anything? 😄 Terrible roads. An inn is one thing, but you still have to get there! The roads in the small German principalities were torn up; carriages constantly stuck in the mud or broke their axles. In one of her letters, Lady Mary describes how they rode all night through a forest near Hanover, risking a rollover at every bump, simply because at the previous station the lodging was a horror even scarier than the fear of breaking one’s neck on the road. Lady Mary wrote a lot about other things as well, including positive notes about big cities, palaces, and culture. For example, she was impressed by Nuremberg and Regensburg. But in her view, traveling comfortably through Germany was absolutely impossible. And in general, she was struck by this paradox of German pride in the complete absence of a notion of service. So what do you think—the extent to which things have improved since then? #history photo