Alma record. (Alma, Mich.) 1878-1928, 1906-08-29
AN|NIERESI|NGLE
From Mss VeIma Sharp, OeS-
criptive of Her Trip to
Europe.
A PLEASANT SEA V0YAG E
Experiences Tinge of Bomeslckness
Cablegram Announces Safe Arrival
at Vienna.

The following interesting letter was
received by Miss Sharp's parents, and
will be of exceptional interest to her
many friends in Alma and vicinity. The
letter was written in Frankfurt A. NJ,
August 10, 1906;
1 am alone today for the first time on
my journey, as met some very pleasant
people on the "Vaderland, who were
coming this way and we came together
I must confess to a pretty severe twinge
of homesickness occasionally but ''swal-
low hard" and look forward to reaching
Vienna tomorrow and soon being at my
study. The "Naderland" landed some
passengers at Dover the evening of Au-
gust 9th aud there was much excitement
and enthusiasm, both on board the boat
and on the pier. I tell you, land looked
very, very good to us just then after ten
days of sky and sea. The last day on the
ocean was perfect and we did not even
have rough sailing III the Channel, which
is noted tor that. We passed many in
teresting places before we reached Dover,
including the Isle of Wight with its chalk
cliffs, Lizard Point with its light house
and other spots; and met several ocean
liners just starting on the return journey
to America. The boats always exchanged
signals, running up the flag and display
,,,r oh att1 I xHyag
decidedly exciting. At Dover we couldn't
help noticing the rather stiff manners of
the people. Some looked as though they
needed fire cracker some where near to
put some life into them. And all the
women carried parasol of some descrip-
ton and the men, even TO small boys,
cane. There were several boys at the
pier in typical schoolboy clothes, just as
you have seen them i'll pictures. There are
some beautiful hotels on the beach at
Dover and it looked like typical sum-
mer resort.
We landed at Antwerp at 600 a. M,
August 9TH and we were all like children,
we were so glad to feel terra frma be-
meath our feet once more. There were
six of us who found that our routes lay in
the same direction so we decided to go as
far as possible together. The party in
cluded Fraulein Reichardt; Mrs. Andre,
lady from New York going to Deutsch-
/ land to visit her parents; Rev. Wilcox
/ from Tarrytown, n. V; Mr.. Lackett, a
druggist from the same place; Mr.. Fuhr-
mann, a young man from Buffalo whose
father is professor i'll a German college,
and myself. We had to part from Mr.
and Mrs. Randalls at the pier and we left
them feeling i'll good health and spirits.
/ The man from Cook met me and piloted
us through the custom house formalities
so that we had no difficulty whatever and
we then decided to spend the two hours
which we had before time for the train to
Cologne, i'll seeing what we could of the
city.
So we engaged carriage and with the
Cooks man seated OH the box beside the
driver to tell us about places of interest, we
started off and spent one of the most in
teresting two hours l ever experienced.
| wish could describe everything which
was new and strange to me but it's too
much to put on paper l shall have TO
wait until l can talk" it. Antwerp is a
beautiful city i'll many ways, very clean
and we'll kept and there is great fishing
business carried on. The houses are typi-
cal Dutch style, tiled, gabled roofs, small
windows and built close to the sidewalks,
which are very narrow. Most all of them
had shutters at the windows but we could
occasionally get glimpse through an
open door of an interior court yard,
around which the houses seem to be built.
The women of the working class wear
aprons and wooden shoes and we saw
some doing regular mans work. We
even saw one woman sweeping the street
while a man walked along by her and
sprinkled it with water to keep the dust
down. Another one was shoveling coal
and we saw number guiding carts drawn
by dog teams, delivering milk in great
metal receptacles shaped like jugs. We
spent few moments in the beautiful
cathedral, which contains several master
pieces of art, including Reuben's "De-
scent from the Cross" and Leonardo di
vinci's Head of Christ" and heard the
boy choir singing to the accompaniment
of the sixth finest organ in the world.
The journey to Cologne was very inter
esting and included custom house wher
we crossed the frontier of Germany, wher,
we all had to get out of the train and lin,