When Stein was three years old, she and her family moved to Vienna, and then Paris. Accompanied by governesses and tutors, the Steins endeavored to imbue their children with the cultured sensibilities of European history and life. After a year-long sojourn abroad, they returned to America in 1878, settling in Oakland, California, where her father became director of San Francisco's streetcar lines, the Market Street Railway, in an era when public transportation was a privately owned enterprise. Stein attended First Hebrew Congregation of Oakland's Sabbath school. During their residence in Oakland, they lived for four years on a ten-acre lot, and Stein built many memories of California there. She would often go on excursions with her brother, Leo, with whom she developed a close relationship. Stein found formal schooling in Oakland unstimulating, but she often read: Shakespeare, Wordsworth, Scott, Burns, Smollett, Fielding, and more.