‘One day in autumn, my boss gave me two thousand kronen to send in the post. It was a quarter to twelve. Our lunch break was from twelve to two, which meant that I would not have to bring him the receipt from the post office until two o’clock. I made all these calculations with the speed of lightning, and resolved to act. With a head start of two hours, I would be outside the firing range before they discovered that anything was wrong. I took the money, found a hansom cab, and told the driver to drive straight to Nordbahnhof. As luck would have it, the express was departing at one o’clock; I had just enough time to buy a ticket and get onto the train, and the next day I was in Berlin. I got off the train without luggage, without a friend, free as a bird in the great foreign metropolis. Here, I was sure, they would never catch me! Like a Berliner born and bred, I strode boldly out of the station, straight into the street yawning in front of me. I was hungry, but I had no German money on me. I made my way from street to street — all the banks were closed for lunch. In the end, after roaming around for an hour, I came across a small money-changer who was still open. I changed a one-hundred-krone note (I was careful not to change it all in one place!) and another two hundred at two other banks. After that I had more than enough for my needs, for the time being at least. The first thing I did was to treat myself to a slap-up meal at a fancy restaurant. Then I bought an elegant suitcase and, thus equipped, I rented a room from an old lady. I signed in under a false name, as a student from Munich. From now on my name was Karl Schtippter, a name that for some reason took my fancy.