Guide To The Famous

Press, Volume CII, Issue 30312, 12 December 1963, Page 2

Guide To The Famous

A hobby that grew from a job ha« provided Miss Mimi Schwarzer, head guide in Vienna for Thos. Cook and Son and the American Express Company, with a collection of the autographs of famous people of many countries. She lists among those she has met President Kennedy, the Duke of Windsor, Toscanini, Sir Compton Mackenzie. Dr. Geoffrey Fisher, the former Archbishop of Canterbury, the Duke of Normandy, many of the American astronauts, and famous architects, members of Parliament, actors, journalists, artists and musicians from all parts of the world. She has been guide to many of them in Vienna. Others she met abroad. Her latest autograph in her

collection is that of the New Zealand Leader of the Opposition (Mr Nordmeyer). Interviewed in Christchurch Miss Schwarzer said she could not single out who she had most enjoyed meeting in Vienna. But one of her most prized autographs is that of a United States Army colonel who played a major part in saving the famous horses of the Spanish Riding School in Vienna, for the Austrian people. During the war Hitler had

the horses sent to Czechoslovakia and when the Russians swept back the horses could not be returned to Austria. The leader of the riding school approached the American Army, and Colonel C. E. Halswell agreed to bring the horses to the American headquarters in Austria. It was 10 years before they could be returned to Vienna, after the occupation troops withdrew. Miss Schwarzer works seven days a week for six months of the year at her job. Travel has become her hobby as well as her work, and every three years she goes on a trip that might last seven or eight months. She knows Europe thoroughly, and has travelled in the United States, Canada, South America and South Africa. This trip is taking her to the South Pacific and Far East.

Now that she has seen New Zealand, Miss Schwarzer says she intends to “sell” it to her customers as her favourite country. She described it yesterday as “one big garden.”

On her overseas trips, Miss Schwarzer stays with some of the many persons she has shown round Vienna. Among her former guests is Mr Jim Colenso, of Lincoln, who,: with his wife, has in turn i been host to Miss Schwarzer; in Christchurch. Miss Schwarzer is also a trained cosmetician and man-; nequin.