Travelling in the past

 

Alma Ida Wilibalda Maximiliana Karlin was born in 1889 in Celje but spoke German and didn’t know how to speak Slovene very well. She claimed herself to be a writer, a world traveller, theosophy learner and a cosmopolitan. She finished her high school education in Graz, Austria and in 1913 she went to London to study languages. She studied English, French, Latin, Italian, Norwegian, Danish, Finish and Russian language and passed the exams of these 8 languages. Later she also studied Persian, Sanskrit, Chinese and Japanese. When she came back in 1919, she taught languages but didn’t stay in Celje for long. She went travelling around the world on 24th of 1919. 

 

On her journey, she took her money, typing machine, 10-language dictionary that she made and her visa to Japan which was her goal. She started in Trieste, then went to Genova, South America, Frisco, Hawaii and travelled to Japan for 2 years. In Trieste she had to wait 5 weeks for her ship and her visum which gave her trouble because her native language was German. She travelled to Peru and in 2 months she was there. She got to know witchcraft and superstitions. In 1920 she worked as a first female translator at Panama Canal. A year after she started travelling again. She went to Nicaragua, Ecuador and came to USA. There she saw Los Angeles from the ship and wrote the famous passage in her travelogue The Odyssey of a Lonely Woman: »Los Angeles is a place of dying. People who enter into good business here, are mainly undertakers. They offer mostly funeral rooms offered as the hotel ones. Many believe that in this favourable climate under the eternal sun they can be cured, then leave their bones in the soft brown sand. For the same reason here thrive various religious sects, as in so many burials world beyond becomes even more interesting. Film companies appear until the third plan«. She made a longer stop in Hawaii where she worked as a translator in a museum. After working for one year, she finally made it to Japan where she got a job at the German embassy. She worked and travelled with a company of intellectuals and artists. She wrote that she finally got the respect she deserved in Japan, although she was a woman. In Europe and in Panama she had to suffer neglecting, humiliation, suffering and harassment just because she was travelling as a single woman. After Japan, she travelled to China, Taiwan, her next goal was Australia. She didn’t have a camera at her journey so she bought postcards of places that she visited and she drew the place on her own when she couldn’t buy one. She came back passing Indonesia, India where she lectured about peace and was awarded because of it. She came back in 1928, seriously ill, poor and emaciated.

 

After coming back Alma had many lectures at different European universities and female organizations. She started to collect her writings from the journey, wrote articles for newspapers and female magazines. She started to publish her travelogue which were very popular with Europeans. Alma wrote about places but put people and culture in front of everything and that is why her travelogues were something special back then.

 

 

Journey of a young woman wasn’t easy at the beginning of the 20th century but Karlin had a wish and a strive to see the world and was persistent on her journey. She circled the world without money with poor article fees and in time with no plane. She was one of the first women who travelled around the world. She wrote about her journey in a book The Odyssey of a Lonely Woman. In 90s she became known to Slovenes since she did not speak Slovene and Slovenia did not know about her even though she was born to Slovene parents in Celje. 

 

Today there is a different way of travelling. You can go anywhere by plane and get there in less or more 24 hours. Women don’t have to be that careful anymore and we also have a hostel at every corner.