Swedish Christmas and a Memorable Train Trip

In Sweden the Christmas Season begins with the festival of Saint Lucia. She is credited with bringing food to the persecuted Christians who were hiding out in the Roman catacombs in the year 304.  She wore a crown of candles to find her way so her hands were free to carry bags of food.  In Sweden on December 13th, young girls don a white robe and a crown of candles and bring Pepparkakor (gingersnaps) to shut-ins.

Gudrun, my Swedish sister, wore the crown and brought Lussekatter to us for breakfast on Saint Lucia's day. These are buns flavored with saffron and dotted with raisins.

Lussekatter - St. Lucia buns

In the Jungner family Christmas was celebrated for three days.  Each day we ate special dishes and relatives visited.  One day there was a buffet with cold meats, herring in different guises, salads, meatballs and special potato dishes.  During the season we drank glögg (spiced mulled wine) on various occasions.

Glögg - warm spiced wine often served with raisins and almonds.

Gunnar, my adopted Swedish father had a special gift for me.  In a card shaped like a car, he enclosed a round-trip ticket to Paris.  There was a message thanking me for acting as chauffeur for the family.  What a kind and thoughtful gift!  I would be able to spend a week visiting my French family that I hadn’t seen for 2 years.

This trip turned out to be a riotous experience. The train left in the late afternoon.  We were to arrive in Paris in the morning. I had a seat in a couchette compartment.  This compartment had three seats on each side in the day time.  At night the seats became beds for two individuals. Above bunks folded down out of the wall to form two additional beds.  So at night six people could sleep quite comfortably.  Normally you were given a pillow and a blanket.

Daytime couchette compartment

Night time.

As luck would have it, I shared my compartment with 5 other young people.  When I slid open the door a young man got up and offered to put my suitcase up above. He introduced himself and explained that he was going to Paris to visit friends. In our compartment there were 3 guys and 3 gals. We were all young and exuberant. Each of us represented a different nationality and spoke a couple of languages. From the start we chattered away translating for each other. This brought on gales of laughter.

At Malmo, the entire train was put on a ferry to cross the Baltic Sea to Germany.  The train cars were rolled down into the hold of the ship.  Once the ferry had left port we could exit our train car and go up on deck.  There was a restaurant up there and a dance band.  The three fellows invited us girls for dinner and dancing. What a lark!  We danced until the band gave up.  Then we all went below to go to bed together in our cozy couchettes.  I remember we told stories and jokes. As I fell asleep I listened to them being translated from language to language followed by a ripple of laughter.

How wonderful to be 18 - charging into life, unfettered and joyful! I was incredibly lucky!