FEBRUARY 19, 2025 – (Cont.) “Monica” was a Swedish woman, about the same age as I (25 at the time), whom I’d met on my first trip to Europe. She and two of her friends, all from Lund, were on a Greek holiday, and our initial encounter was aboard an overnight ferry from Brindisi to Corfu, where I disembarked, before the boat—and the Swedish trio—continued on to Piraeus (the port serving Athens).
Two days later I myself continued to Athens, where I found a room in an ultra-cheap hotel. After exploring the Acropolis, the Plaka, and other popular sites, I took a day trip to Delphi, home of the Oracle. Before catching an evening bus back to Athens, I stopped for an early dinner at the terrace restaurant of the local youth hostel.
I was shown a table and a menu. After giving the waiter my order, I surveyed the terrace and saw two other guys, each about my age, each already seated at a separate table not too distant from my own. “Do either of you speak English?” I asked.
Both did.
“Where are you from?” I asked.
One was a Brit. The other hailed from Prague.
“And you?” the Czech asked me.
Soon after I revealed my nationality, the Brit moved on. He had had little to say; less to ask. Fine. Be that way. He was finished with his meal and finished with the conversation that had barely begun. The Czech, on the other hand, was more eager to engage. “Mind if I join you?” he asked.
I was delighted by his question, curious as could be that a citizen from behind the Iron Curtain would be on the loose in the West and interested in talking to a Yank. This is why a person should travel, I told myself.
His hearty handshake and intelligent eyes over a friendly smile informed me immediately that I was in for a fascinating conversation. My expectations were soon exceeded. It didn’t take long for me to conclude that his country was deprived for every minute he spent beyond its borders.
After some minutes, out of nowhere I heard a woman’s voice call out my name. To hear the sound most familiar to me in a setting that was most unfamiliar was an altogether strange occurrence. I turned my head in the direction of the voice—upward, to my right. There I saw the three Swedes I’d met aboard the ferry. They waved, leaning over the waist-high wall of a patio roof above the restaurant terrace. I greeted them cheerily and told them to come down and join us.
Moments later I was introducing them to Pavel. When I explained that he was a medical student on holiday, Lisabet, one of the Swedes, asked if he could take a look at a rash that had mysteriously appeared on her forearm. Although Pavel’s chosen specialty would be heart surgery, he gladly assumed the role of an urgent care physician. He examined the rash, asked a battery of questions and suggested a remedy, a topical ointment available, no doubt, in the local apothecary. All of us were impressed by the Czech’s chairside manner and diagnostic/analytical skill.
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Suddenly the time machine whisked me forward to 1981 but past February to early November. It stopped at the main train station in Lund, Sweden. I’d just arrived from visiting a cousin in Stockholm on my way to visit other cousins in Malmö before heading to Holland, then the UK. A few days before I’d returned to Sweden from my sojourn in the Soviet Union—Leningrad, Moscow, Irkutsk, Khabarovsk in the Russian Far East via a round trip journey on the Trans-Siberian Railway. I was now heading toward the end of my Grand Odyssey. Monica had come down to the station to greet me and walk me arm-in-arm to her family’s flat a few blocks away.
We’d corresponded regularly but hadn’t visited since Delphi that summer of 1979. It was grand to see her. Thanks to Monica’s outreach by way of her letter in February and my parents’ reciprocation, she had been journeyed to Minnesota after attending a friend’s wedding in Michigan the previous summer. How strange to think she’d met my parents, stayed at our house far more recently than I had.
Monica was studying audiology at the famous University of Lund, and while she was attending classes the next day, I wandered around the law school and invited myself into a class. It happened to be a course on taxation and was no more exciting than my own law school tax course the previous year. Later in the day, Monica drove us to a wonderful park on the outskirts of Lund, where we strolled among towering fir trees.
Suddenly the time machine shook and trembled, disrupting the direction of my reminiscence and signaling an imminent change of the datometer. Before I knew it, Monica and I were back on the platform at the järnvägsstation (railway station). She was beautiful with a beautiful voice, and while we waited for my train to Malmö to appear, she sang a divine version of Ah Värmland! As the last strains of the haunting melody faded, the train’s arrival was announced. Soon we’d embrace a final time, sealed with a kissed farewell. (Cont.)
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© 2025 by Eric Nilsson
