The American Woman Abroad

Time travel.......set the dial to the year 1911...............your host.....Blanche Mcmanus........your destination...London,Paris,Berlin.... and more, like you have never experienced before or will you ever experience again.This is,after all, a different time in history....tour the cities,countrysides,restaurants,markets etc.........take in the sites,sounds and smells and lose yourself in the surroundings......this is a book that you will totally enjoy.American woman abroad, married or single, young or old. When the lone woman traveller leaves her steamer and stands before some doorway to Europe for the first time, she sometimes finds herself in the midst of a confusion of ideas as well as a confusion of tongues. She has left home with a clear-cut idea of what she wants to do and see, but about twenty different people on shipboard have given her as many different kinds of advice. If she can but realise it, every porter, cabby and hotel waiter is waiting for her coming, and if she will but put herself in the hands of the great army of those who cater to the wants and needs of the tourist, she will be passed along as expeditiously and safely as a bale of merchandise. Her type has become as well recognised, and she is catered for equally as well as the large party who orders a suite of rooms in advance, usually at advanced prices. The profession of tourist means a lot of hard work. It's not raptures and roses all along the way. If the average tour abroad was made compulsory what a howl would go up from many a wanderer. Most people take more exercise in a few months of travel than they do in years at home. They reverse their way of living, crowd their stomachs with strange food, and their bags grow steadily heavier with foolish souvenirs, and in the multiplying of new brain cells, in the tussle with several samples of languages, that poor organ gets as sore as a set of unused muscles. The lone woman has all sorts of fears. She is as nervous as a cat trying to get across a street. Will she be lonely; who will she have to talk to? For a fact, if she can get out of the sound of an American voice she will be lucky. The sights of Europe are obscured by her compatriots. It is also easy to attach oneself to a party. The American likes nothing better than to travel in bunches, through sociability and, perhaps, a certain lack of confidence. Anyway, they are to be seen all over the country in parties, that, like a snowball rolling along, grows in size at every pension and hotel it comes to, until it finally becomes too unwieldy to be housed and moved about. Here is just where there occurs much loss of time and not a little friction: It is impossible not to be so in a crowd of a dozen or more women with an easy-going man or two in the background. The American man rather regards the trip abroad, as he does religion and society, as the particular province of his womankind, and is usually quite willing that she should lead the attacking force against the foreigner and his language, which attitude still further mystifies that perplexed individual in his efforts to understand his American clientele. There is a first loneliness and strangeness which clutches the lone woman traveller, a sort of land-sickness which must be gone through with as is seasickness, but once the crisis is passed she will be in a fairer way to enjoy herself than if she was tagged to any group of people, no matter how agreeable they might appear. Even in linking up the most desirable of companions en voyage, one should be in a position to throw off the line readily and be able to part conveniently, pleasantly and easily. Once the ship arrives on the other side the steward carries her hand-baggage off the steamer onto the dock, or to the tender which takes the passengers ashore. He has become as an old friend, and she almost clings to him when she gives the parting tip. Read more