But the teacher fell ill and Alma was forced to seek education elsewhere. If she ever picked up lessons with her teacher again remains unknown. Alma lived in Alvarez Street, opposite the post office, not far from where her cousin Camillo lived. It was in Gorizia that she prepared for the first state examination and continued to learn languages. The time she spent in Gorizia was defining for Alma Karlin, who invested a lot of effort to be able to study here and prepare for the state examination for teacher certification. Having passed the state examination in French and English she finally had the opportunity to earn her own money teaching, and this opened up the world for her. In 1909, she went to London, where she studied English, French, Latin, Italian, Norwegian, Danish, Russian, and Spanish, all at the same time. She embarked on her first long journey already in 1908, and took off again in 1920 from Trieste, this time across the ocean to South America.

Written in German, her novels were extremely popular with readers and she lived to see them translated into English, French, and Finnish.

When she lived in Gorizia, she often joined her mother and other relatives on visits to her aunt, her father’s sister Ernestina, who was a postmistress in Kojsko.

The stretched out hamlet in the midst of the Brda hills, the blessed land of wine, clings to the slope of a gentle hill. Only fig and almond trees break the monotony of vines as jagged Alpine peaks, softened by distance, raise their snow-capped summits behind the countless hills. Below, between Gorizia and the Brda, runs the emerald Soča, a river like no other.