On this date in 1797 Ida Pfeiffer was born in Vienna. She travelled the world, alone, in a time when women just didn’t do stuff like that, and wrote books about her adventures which were translated into seven languages. Here are some facts about Ida and her travels:
Her father was a textile manufacturer named Aloys Reyer. She had five brothers and a younger sister. She was a bit of a tomboy growing up, preferring to wear boys’ clothes. "I was not shy," she wrote in her autobiography, "but wild as a boy, and bolder and more forward than my elder brothers." Her father encouraged her liking for sports and made sure she got the same education as her brothers did.
Aloys died in 1806 and Ida’s mother tried to put a stop to her tomboyish ways and turn her into a lady, making her wear dresses and learn to knit and play the Piano. She hated her piano lessons so much that she would burn and mutilate her fingers to get out of them.
In due course, Ida fell in love, with her tutor, who often came to stay with the family. For him she began wearing skirts and learned embroidery. Far from being pleased, Ida’s mother refused to let her marry him and threw him out of the house. She arranged a marriage to Mark Anton Pfeiffer, a widowed lawyer who was 24 years older than Ida and had a grown up son. Ida didn’t want to marry him and told him straight off the bat that she was in love with someone else. He replied, “I think we all are.” Nevertheless, the couple got along well enough and Ida had two sons with him.
It was only after her husband died and her sons were grown up and working, that Ida embarked on her epic travels, at the age of 45. She may have been pretty brave in terms of the things she did on her travels, but telling her family what her true intentions were was not one of them. She told them she was going to Constantinople to meet a friend. A woman doing this trip alone was scandalous enough, but Ida set off for the Holy Land instead and spent 8 months exploring there. She did visit Constantinople, so what she told her family wasn’t entirely a lie. She joined a mounted tour there despite never having ridden a Horse before.
She seriously considered travelling to the North Pole, but “insurmountable difficulties on closer inspection” put her off. So she went to Iceland instead. Here, she collected samples of local plants and insects and took what were probably the first ever photographs of Iceland, having taken with her “daguerreotype apparatus enclosed in a small case”. Her preparations for the trip had been learning how to use this, plus how to preserve specimens and learning to speak English and Danish. Selling the samples of nature she collected during her trips were one of the ways she financed her journeys.
She went round the world twice, between 1846 and 1855, covering about32,000 kilometres (20,000 miles) by land and 240,000 kilometres (150,000 miles) by sea. She met any number of scientists and explorers, including her childhood hero Alexander von Humboldt. She dined with Queen Pomare IV of Tahiti, went Tiger hunting in India, rode Camels through Iran and went hiking in the jungles of Brazil. It was here she had a close encounter with a native who jumped out at her brandishing a knife and “gave us to understand more through gestures than words that he would murder us and drag us through the forest.” Ida fought him off with an Umbrella and a pocket knife until she was rescued by two riders who just happened to be passing by. She’d received some cuts to her arms and the umbrella was broken – kept the broken off handle of the umbrella as a trophy – but was otherwise undeterred and once her wounds were dressed, carried on, “although not completely without fear”, but in “continually increasing admiration of the beautiful scenery”. Despite being 50 years old by now, the local guides could barely keep up with her pace.
In Indonesia, she spent time with by the Batak tribe, who were Cannibals and so most travellers were afraid of them. She chose not to believe the horror stories she’d read and sought them out anyway. She joked that she was too old and tough to be worth eating, and made extensive notes of her stay which proved useful for anthropologists. She even noted down some of their recipes.
Her travel diaries were initially intended just for herself, but her friends at home persuaded her to publish them and the rest is history.
While she was aware enough not to believe the writings of xenophobic Europeans, preferring to see for herself and make up her own mind, she could be judgemental at times. She called Praya dos Mineiros “a filthy, disgusting place.” She called Arabs lazy, thought the people of Borneo walked funny, and that Iranian women were uneducated and ignorant. She noted that indigenous tribes were often at war with each other and sometimes mounted their enemies’ heads on spikes. However, she then wrote about Europeans: “[Are we not] really just as bad or worse than these despised savages? Is not every page of our history filled with horrid deeds of treachery and murder?” She noted that the Turks and Bedouins were welcoming and went out of their way to make travellers feel at home, which, she pointed out, put the Europeans treatment of foreigners to shame.
Her final trip was to Madagascar in 1857. She got thrown out of that country, as she’d befriended a Frenchman called Joseph-François Lambert. Ida had no idea that he was involved in a plot to overthrow Ranavalona I, the queen of Madagascar, but was expelled along with him when Ranavalona found out about the plot. Not only that, but it was on this trip that she caught a disease, thought to be malaria, which she never fully recovered from. Ida Pfeiffer died on October 27, 1858, in Vienna at age 63.
NEW!!
Beta
(Combat Team Series #2)
Steff was abducted by an evil alien race, the Orbs, at fourteen. Used as a weapon for years, he eventually escapes, but his problems are just beginning. How does a man support himself when his only work experience is a paper round and using an Orb bio-integrated gun?
Warlord is an alien soldier who knows little but war. When the centuries-old conflict which ravaged his planet ends, he seeks out another world where his skills are still relevant. There are always wars on Earth, it seems. However, none of Earth's powerful armies want him.
Natalie has always wanted to visit England and sees a chance to do so while using her martial arts skills, but there are sacrifices she must make in order to fulfil her dream.
Maggie resorted to crime to fund her sister's medical care. She uses her genetic variant abilities to gain access to the rooms of wealthy hotel guests. The Ballards look like rich pickings, but they are not what they seem. When Maggie targets them, little does she know that she is walking into a trap.
Hotel owner Hamilton Lonsdale puts together a combat team to pit against those of other multi-millionaires. He recruits Warlord, Natalie, Maggie and Steff along with a trained gorilla, a probability-altering alien, a stockbroker whose work of art proved to be much more than he'd bargained for, a marketing officer who can create psionic forcefields, a teleporting member of the landed gentry, and a socially awkward fixer. This is Combat Team Beta.
Steff never talks about his time with the Orbs, until he finds a woman who lived through it, too. Steff believes he has finally found happiness, but it is destined to be short-lived. He is left with an unusual legacy which he and Team Beta struggle to comprehend; including why something out there seems determined to destroy it.
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