Road Back by Erich Maria Remarque — Read

I sat at home all the afternoon and tried to do something, but nothing has come of it. For an hour already I have been roaming aimlessly through the streets. In the course of my patrolling I go past the new restaurant, the Holländische Diele. This is the third gin shop to go up within the last three weeks. These things with their gay placards are springing up like mushrooms everywhere among the houses. The Holländische Diele is the largest and flashiest.

Before the illuminated glass door stands a porter, looking like a cross between a bishop and a colonel of the hussars, an enormous fellow with a gilded baton in his hand. I catch his eye-suddenly his dignity deserts him, and he prods me in the stomach with his club and grins: "Hullo, Ernst, you old scarecrow! Commong sa va, as the Frenchman says."