My fun Summers

I always looked forward to the Swedish summers with their long light nights because the sun hardly ever set below the horizon. As a young girl the summers seemed forever. Sometimes it could rain for weeks. Then we played up in the attic with our dolls, listening to the rain as it landed on the roof. We lived close to a forest where we picked and ate blueberries, lingonberries and wild strawberries. I loved fish. Once a week a fisherman would come by selling freshly caught herrings out of the trunk of his car. That was our dinner for that day. We put up a tent in the backyard, in which several of my friends and I slept. The days were spent down by the river in Baggbole, swimming in the very, very icecold water among big timber logs that were transported to the mouth of the Baltic Sea. To get there we had to go down a very long, very steep hill and coming back up the hill seemed twice as steep and long. Thinking back, I am amazed how few parents were there to supervise their children. With the water being so very cold and the riverbottom suddenly becoming very deep even close to the shore, it is surprising that only one accident happened during those years. Unfortunately one of my friends, Monika, drowned there when she was 12 years old. She was her parents only daughter with four brothers. We, her friends, dressed in white clothes, sang at her funeral. I still remember that sad day very clearly.
We lived very close to the main road and when I was very young, horse and wagon was the main trainsportation. Occasionally we saw a spooked horse come running down the street all alone. A sight to behold was when the gypsies came by on their horsedrawn wagons. The gypsies were stateless people who roamed from country to country. I remember the women wearing brightly colored clothing, consisting of layered skirts, head scarves and lots of golden necklaces and bracelets. They set up their tents in the forest where we picked blueberries and stayed for a couple of weeks. We never went into the forest when they were there.
Also coming by on the road were tattare. They were poor groups of people outside the established Swedish society. Their clothing were very very simple and plain, the kids were dirty and, as I mentioned, you could tell they were very poor.
When I got older, I attended the fun barn dances in the next little village. We walked or rode our bikes there on Wednesday, Friday and Saturday nights.
However, life was not just fun and dances. I got my first 'real' job when I was 16. Mr. Hultman, the owner of the only grocery store in town asked me to work there for the summer. I really enjoyed it. The ladies there were extremely fun to work with. They had such a fun sense of humor.
The next summer I got a job at Umedalen's Mental Hospital as a nurse's aid. I worked in many different wards depending on where I was needed. I was the first girl ever to work on a ward with about 50 male patients who had severe mental illnesses. My duties were mainly to be in the 'kitchen'. That meant that I was responsible to get the food loaded on a big heavy cart from the main kitchen via underground culverts three times a day. I had to set the tables, serve the food, feed some patients, clean up, wash all the dishes and containers, and bring the cart back to the main kitchen. One month I worked nights from 9 p.m. to 7 a.m. by myself on a women only ward. Every hour I had to check on the ladies as they were sleeping to make sure they were OK. I worked at the hospital off and on the next four summers also. The pay was actually quite good.
When I was 19 I went with two friends to Paris and then on to Spain for a month in the summer. We were in Paris only a few days. One night we went dancing. There was this really handsome well-dressed man there. He did not dance with anyone. He finally came and asked me to dance. His name was Sven and he was from Switzerland. We had the same birthday. He wanted to show me Paris by night and I let him because he was a gentleman. He had a VW bug that he had parked on the sidewalk and he drove me around looking at the sights. It was soo romantic to see Paris by night with a tall, handsome guide. He had given me his business card while we were dancing and since I did not have neither purse nor pockets, I put the card in my heel-less shoe. Later that year, in August, I was going to go with my parents to the LDS Temple in Bern, Switzerland. Sven wanted me to contact him when I got there. Unfortunately, I lost his business card and never saw him again.
In Spain we visited Barcelona, Castellon and Alicante, along the coast. We spent most of the time on the beaches during the day. I remember one occasion when we went to a nice nightclub. The Spanish girls who were there had chaperones with them. We decided not to stay and started walking away. When we looked back, all the fellows at the dance were following us at a safe distance to see where we were going next. Spain was gorgeous with red soil and lots of orange and lemon groves. We ran into a Swedish couple who had a beautiful summer home there. Everything was very inexpensive at that time. We took taxicabs to lots of places.
When I was 21 I served a mission for my Church. I was the secretary to the Mission President in Stockholm, Sweden, for 19 months. After that I went to the United States for about two and a half years. I got back to Sweden in February with a return ticket to the U.S. in September.
Well, I did not make it back to the U.S. then. I had always wanted to go to Switzerland because it looked so beautiful on the pictures I had seen. I had taken German in school and figured I could work in a hospital as a nurse's aid. I would not need to talk much doing that. I went to the library to see if I could find the name of a hospital in Zurich. I just saw the word Kantonspital. Anyway, I wrote a letter in English asking if I could work there in June and July. I addressed the envelope as follows: "To the biggest hospital in Zurich, Switzerland." (In English, not even in German.) I got a response back telling me I could work there in July and August. I accepted. I chose a hospital because they usually have housing for their staff and they did within walking distance. I flew to Zurich and started working. Even though I had taken German in school, I did not understand much of what they said when they spoke to each other in Swiss German. Eventually I learned to understand that also. I liked it so much there that I stayed at the hosptial till December and then I got a job at the Swiss Bank Corporation for 18 months, the maximum length of the work permit.
I truly enjoyed my stay in Zurich. On my first day off, I located the LDS church on the map and walked there, so I knew where the go the following Sunday. It took me over an hour. After that I took the tram when I learned how it worked. I met some wonderful young people at the Church. They were all from different countries, Germany, England, United States, South Africa. We did fun things as a group. We did not associate with the Swiss Church youth much. Since we were all foreigners, we had that in common and got along very well. While I was there I dated a guy from England, Peter, as well as a guy from Zurich, Ruedi, and a guy from Lausanne, Fernand. Peter had a degree in chemistry and was a private tutor to a rich man's son. Ruedi had a motorcycle and took me on a few rides. Fernand had a pilot's license and his dad owned a small airplane. I was able to go on some trips with Fernand over the Swiss alps. I also went with him sail plane gliding. I really had a great time doing all this.