World traveller Alma Karlin (1889–1950) captured the impressions from her travel adventures in successful novels and travelogues. She set off on her first journey in 1914, but her life’s journey took place between 1919 and 1928. Before the war she followed her language teacher Ms. Pervanja-Kotalik to Gorizia, where she lived for a short while with her mother Vilibalda. The two women and other relatives often visited Vilibalda’s sister-in-law and Alma’s aunt Ernestina in Kojsko, where Ernestina served as a post mistress.
In her autobiography Sama (Alone), Alma remembered her days in Gorizia:
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 while 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.