AN INTERESTING TRAVELLER.

Star (Christchurch), Issue 18961, 7 January 1930, Page 15

AN INTERESTING TRAVELLER.

“ Three and a half years I have been in Poland; I was in Italy during the war, and I have lived in Switzerland and London. Not very long in London, Mademoiselle. Ido not like it. I have no affinity with London; I am of the Continent —it is my home, I have been everywhere there. I do not exist there —I live! ” Swiftly, with gay gesticulations, Miss Aileen Alpen, an Australian, who has been five times through the Red Sea, sketches her life, her conversation winging like a swallow from country to country,” says an Australian writer. “ I speak five languages, and have been teaching English to Polish students in Cracow—the great university of Central Europe, which comes second only to that of Padau. Ah, the stories I could tell! I was nearly shot once in Italy during the war. I was doing free-lance journalism then for Sydney papers, till the censor made it impossible. I have been presented to Mussolini. His eyes are not so hard as his mouth. We did not have a long conversation. Hearing I was an Australian, he mentioned what a fine country it was, and I said what a grand country was Italy. One never sees a fat woman in Poland. They all care too much for their appearance, and do plastic gymnastics to keep their figures.. They dress beautifully, and are highly cultured. No girl is considered educated unless she has been to the university, and every girl chooses a career of some kind, and this does not end with marriage. My pupils at the university were charming. When I left they gave me six handbags and numbers of bouquets. They loved me to teach them Australian slang, believing it gave a cachet to their learning. I could not live in Sydney, Mademoiselle, because of the high prices. It is a very dear place—l think the people here must live on boots; every second shop in town appears to be a boot shop.” Before leaving Poland, Miss Alpen was given the task of preparing a guide book of Cracow for the benefit of visitors to the Posen Exhibitiqn.