ALONE IN BERLIN.

Gisborne Times, Volume XXIX, Issue 3348, 14 October 1911, Page 3

ALONE IN BERLIN.

EXPERIENCE OF AN AMERICAN WOMAN. “Getting about Europe without a man and with only English in one’s linguistic capabilities is apt to have its disadvantages,” admitted an American woman on her return to the States recently. “I was made to realise this very forcibly in Berlin about four weeks ago. “I had been attending to business m a travel bureau, and started to leave to return to my hotel, the Westminster, which was a little over two blocks away. As I stepped out of the street a big burly man, who looked like a coachmanj rushed up and laid a heavy hand upon my arm. I looked at him in astonishment and shook off liis grasp. He grabbed my arm again and blocked my way. I looked about for a policeman but coulci not see one. I demanded in English what the fellow meant. He poured out something in German, but it was beyond me, and I tried to get past him. “By this time a crowd was beginning "to collect, and the situation was to say the least, embarrassing. The fact is I was pretty much frightened. At every step I made the man would grab me 'by the arm and the crowd was making all sorts of guttral remarks I heard some woman say in broken English that I was an American but for the life of me I could not see what that had to do with my being insulted in a public street. Then a man came along who was evidently Spanish .but who spoke to me in English. I asked him to tell me what was the matter. “ ‘The man says,’ lie told me, ‘that you are an American, and that you have plenty of money.’ That is all I could get out of him. I gathered that I was suspected of being Miss Vanderbilt or something of the sort, and that somebody wanted me to give up what money t had. It was an extraordinary situation. “The" crowd kept growing as I literally forced my way along, dragging the burly person at my side, who kept tugging at my arm and jabbering away in liis lingo. Soon I was completely worn out. The whole crowd seemed against me, for some reason or other. But just as I felt ready to sink down upon the pavement I caught sight of my hotel, and that changed my feeling into aggression. I grabbed the big German then, and it was I who led him on to where there was somebody who could speak English. .. T u i “I held on to the man while I called the porter, whom I instructed to demand what the other meant by insulting me in the street and annoying me’ alf the way to the hotel. He had some conversation with the buily individual, and then he said: • ‘This coachman says that he drove vou to the travel bureau an hour ago, "and that after keeping him waiting you tried to run away without paying “This was news to me, yrho had been running about in ’buses and tramcais all day, and hadn’t been in a carriage once. The coachman seemed to doubt my word when I denied the charge, and the porter did not seem convinced. But lie. said something to the other man, who shook his head, and said .lie was going back to the travel buieau, and that now he knew where I was stopping he would make sure of ’ getting his money.' I went up to my room ready to "faint,, and all that evening 1 kept" expecting the coachman to show up with a policeman or a magistrate and hale me off to a station. I don t know whether the man mistook me tor another American woman or whether he was trying a hold-up game. He did not give me any more trouble. A woman ought to have some protection against such a disagreeable experience ii” a citv like Berlin.”