Gluck auf! auf wiedersehn! thin-faced Germans, expatriates in Moscow, bared their heads in last week's chilly air and cried good wishes to a small, chunky blonde girl, who dressed in grey knickers, sat at the wheel of a smart tourist car. She, Clarenore Stinnes, daughter of the late Hugo Stinnes, Germany's post-War industrial tsar, had broken a transeurasian tour at Moscow.
With her black setter Lord for company & guard, a Swedish camera man and two chauffeurs to drive her baggage truck, she had already last week driven her car 7,300 miles in 42 traveling days—from Constantinople, through Syria, Armenia and Persia, to Moscow. Europeans were amazed; Germans were proud besides.
Her objectives after Moscow, were Omsk, Tomsk, and Urga and then across Mongolia to Kilgan and Peking.
To a Russian journalist's deferential request for a farewell statement, she flippantly answered: "There are no roads after Nijni Novgorod [ancient commercial fair city] for the next 5,600 miles, but the tracks the peasants use are often better than the Russian roads and there are bridges over most of the rivers.
So I ought to make good time— say 30 days to Urga—and if I am caught, that will be six months of Siberian exile, that is all."