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MEMOIRS - 1
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By:
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afstrom
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Mood:
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Happy
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Date:
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Aug 16, 2008
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MY LIFE ON FOUR CONTINENTS
I would like to extend my thanks and appreciation to my friend Carlos Marbán for proofreading and correcting my manuscript.
FAMILY BACKGROUND AND EARLY CHILDHOODFamily
In 1999 I wrote Part 1 of what I then called Tales from an Adventurous Life, describing my family history with the title The Stroms and the af Stroms, intended for my family, only. This Part covers important memories from my working life and, in order not to make the text longer than necessary, very little about family life and relations.
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I was born in the darkest of Smaaland, the part of Sweden from where the persons came whose lives have been described in the well known Swedish films, The Emigrants and the Immigrants, etc., based on the books written by the famous Swedish author Wilhelm Moberg. There is a tale in Sweden that states that if you place a Smaalander on a cliff in the middle of the sea, he will be able to make a living.
Well, while I hope that I adopted some of the qualities of the Smaalanders, I do not have any Smaalandish blood in my veins. I am a mixpixel, as our queen said about herself and her origin, when she was first engaged to our king when he was still the crown prince. My father, who had been the Swedish military attaché in Vienna during WWI, had retired from the army and, settled down in the village of Kaerda, some 10 km from the town of Vaernamo and about 80 km from city of Joenkoeping, well known as the city where Swedish Matches are produced, where he bought an estate, Sjoetorp.
My grandfather, Knut Richard , was the youngest son of Israel af Strom, known as the Father of Forestry, who drafted the Swedish forestry and wild life animal laws and founded the Royal Institute of Forestry, for which he was knighted in 1832. Israel's father had in his youth been a supercargo on board his uncle's ship on routes to the Middle East and North Africa. I think I might have inherited some of his adventurous genes
My grandfather was married to Eugenia Josefina Loewenskiold, daughter of the Norwegian head of the royal Swedish court, Lord Chamberlain Henrik Ernst Loewenskiold, who became the last Governor of Norway. Thus, on my father's side, I have both Swedish and Norwegian blood in my veins.
Here I have to say something more about my Norwegian background. Because my father was old, he was born 1867, and his parents were dead, I knew very little about his family. However, he told us stories from visits to Fossum, the Loewenskiold estate, which was said to be Norway's largest wooden house. He also told us about the death of his mother, Eugenia Josefina Loewenskiold. He was only 12 when she passed away, unexpectedly, during the night. Obviously due to a heart attack.
While I have not have had much contact with the Loewenskiolds, in 1959 I visited their Vackeroe estate, outside Oslo. However, I have a more interesting story: In 1947 or 48, I had navigated a SAS aircraft to New York, where it was due for overhaul and maintenance, and I was flying back to Stockholm as a passenger. I had some conversation with the passenger, sitting next to me, about the flight, etc. When he told me that he was Norwegian, I responded by telling him that I have family in Norway. He asked for the name of my Norwegian relatives, and I told him "Loewenskiold". He got very surprised and said: "Then we are related, my name is Loewenskiold".". He was a student at one of the US universities, I think Harvard, and was going home for summer vacation. When we arrived at Forneby, where he got off, his family was there to meet him. He called me and introduced me to them.
But that is not the only story I have about my Norwegian relatives. When we saw a video of the film Babette's Party, which plays out in Denmark, though I have heard that in the book that the film is based on, the events take place in Norway. We concluded that the Swedish actor, Jarl Kulle, who first acted as a young lieutenant and then as a colonel, represented my paternal grandfather. Because at the end, when as a colonel he returns to the place and family he had visited as a young lieutenant, he briefly tells about his deceased wife, Eugenia Josefina Loewenskiold, a lady in waiting to Queen Sofia, i.e. my grandmother.
My father had met my mother during his time in Vienna. Her mother, Alice Gassner was a famous German artist, the first woman to have graduated from the Academy of Art of Vienna. She specialized in painting horses, and traveled around Hungary and Austria, painting the horses of the landowners, and she also painted the horses of my father, who was one of the top riders and had finished in 6th position in competition riding at the 1912 Stockholm Olympics.
My maternal grandmother, Alice Gassner accompanied my father & mother to Sweden, but we didn't know that she was our grandmother, because prior to marrying my father, my mother had been adopted by the sister and brother-in-law of my grandmother, Fritz and Friede Lech from Osterode in East Prussia. Thus, I grew up believing that my grandmother, whom we called Machen, was an aunt of my mother. My sister Gisela got her to admit the truth in connection with my mother's death in 1955. Thus we learned that my mother was, in fact, the illegitimate daughter of a Hungarian noble and landowner with the names of Wurmbrandt, whose horses my grandmother had painted. Thus, on my mother's side, I have both German and Hungarian blood. However, as none of us knew this until 1955, I am going to refer to Alice Gassner as Machen, my mother's aunt, and to Fritz and Friede Lech as my maternal grandparents and to my German mother
My earliest memory is eating my first egg. I might have been 8 or 9 months old then and the nurse tried to get me to eat a boiled egg. I protested violently, but finally I gave in and accepted to taste it. I liked the taste and ate the whole egg, and since then, boiled egg became one of my favorite meals.
We had several servants at Sjoetorp. The head of them was a retiree from one of the horse regiments. The name of the first one was Asp and the name of his successor was Moeller. They looked after my father's horses, and were both our chauffeur, coachman and butler, who during dinner, served the grown-ups, dressed in a livery. My sister and I were not yet allowed at the table, and were served our meals in the nursery. In addition to the manservant, we had a maid and a woman to cook and a nurse for us children, plus a gardener.
I spent most of the time during my pre-school years in the company of Machen and our gardener, Adrian. At that time I was bilingual. With Machen I communicated in German, and with Adrian in Swedish. Machen took me along gathering flowers, mushrooms and berries in the adjacent woods, and read historical stories about knights and fairy tales, such as those by the Grimm Brothers. Adrian, who had been a railroad worker, told me about trains and locomotives of various kinds, and also about America and inventors. My father had told me about Russia, Sweden's enemy through centuries, but I was more interested in Adrian's tales, and we both hoped that America would conquer Sweden.
Among my toys was a small car, which I conducted down a slope from the kitchen to the firewood storeroom. I liked that very much, but the fun ended when I got a new car as a Christmas gift. It had been constructed by one of the carpenters in the area, and was very nice looking. However, it had one important fault, the connection between the steering wheel and the front wheels. Thus, when you turned the steering wheel to the left, the front wheels turned to the right. My father called the craftsman who had constructed the car, and complained, but obviously without result. As the old car had been destroyed, I didn't have any car any more.
In August 1927, I began primary school at age 5, in Kaerda village. In the morning, I was brought to School, either by car or by a horse carriage. The distance to the school was about 3 km, and while I was usually picked up for the return trip, I also used to walk back, together with one or two of my classmates who lived close to us. One of them used to come and visit me in the afternoon, but by and large my main company was still Machen and Adrian. The primary school classes were conducted every second day, because there was just one teacher, who taught the 1st class or grade one day and the 2nd class the next.
I quickly learned to read, and borrowed books in the school's library. Robinson Crusoe was the first one I read plus a number of other books for children. I even got started on Nils Holgerson by the Nobel Prize winning author Selma Lagerloef. Thus, although I did not have friends, I didn't feel lonely as I had Adrian and Machen. My father also taught me to fish, which I enjoyed. Furthermore, I learned both to swim and to ski.
I remember one day when I accompanied Adrian when he was rowing the Parish Priest to the other side of the lake, adjacent to our house. During the trip, the priest was examining him in his knowledge of the Bible. I understood a bit of the questions, because I also attended Sunday School, which was taught by the wife of the priest.
During my first school year, I underwent surgery for appendicitis in the Vaernamo Hospital. While the operation was successful, I caught a cold with coughing from the ether used as anesthesia, and each cough caused great pain in the wound of my stomach. But I survived, even though it took some time before I could walk normally. I remember Asp, the chauffeur, carrying me from the automobile to my classroom.
While I was bilingual when I began school, this almost came to an end when our teacher made a remark, blaming some mistake I had made on "the foreign language". Her remark caused my classmates to tease me. At first, I refused to speak German at home, but I soon continued as before, but made sure not to utter any German word, while at school.
My parents went from time to time in to Vaernamo for purchases, medical consultation and to visit friends, and I was often permitted to join them. Furthermore, they traveled to Ljungby, where the nearest shop selling alcohol was located. Alcohol was at that time subject to rationing in Sweden. They also traveled to Joenkoeping, where my mother purchased silk clothing. On these trips, we were normally not permitted to join them. On one occasion, this caused me to let lose my "Hungarian" temper. I had seen that the chauffeur was preparing the car, and I went to my mother to get her agreement to join her, but she refused. I went into a rage, and threatened to throw her silk dresses into the lake, and I was stopped when I was about to implement my threat.
When I was in the 2nd grade, we all made a trip by car to Stockholm, where my father was to undergo a medical examination. In Stockholm, I met my father's sister, my aunt Sophia, and my cousins. The result of my father's medical examination was that he required treatment for cancer at the "Radium Home". For this reason, shortly thereafter, he went back to Stockholm, together with my mother, and we children were taken care of by one of our neighbors and friends of my parents.
In 1927, my brother Richard was born. We children were told that the "stork" would bring us a brother or sister. I remember the day of his birth, when I scanned the sky to see if a stork would arrive. I also remember that we had a wall clock, assembled by my grandfather, where instead of figures the hours were marked with the letters of his name, Richard Strom, i.e. 12 letters. In our family, only the head is noble and has the right to use the "af" in our name, and when my grandfather assembled the clock, his older brother was the one who was an "af Strom". However, when the brother died and the title went to my grandfather, he permitted every member of the family to use the "af", and so did my father after him. I heard my father telling my mother that the clock would be inherited by my brother, and I remember that this made me jealous.
During my second year in school, my maternal grandparents, Fritz and Frieda Lech, paid us a visit. I spent a lot of time with my grandfather, who was a schoolteacher. He liked to walk, as I did, and I showed him around in the neighborhood and the forest area, where I had accompanied Machen, gathering flowers, mushrooms and berries. He also gave me an atlas and taught me geography, which I would not study in school until several years later. I was sorry when my grandparents went back home and missed them a lot.
SECONDARY SCHOOL CLASSES GRADES 1 - 4
Times were getting bad as the great depression of the 1930's got under way and my father was losing part of his inheritance in the stock market. For this reason, Sjoetorp was sold, and we moved to Eksjoe, "a garrison city, where one of my father's best friends, Count Gilbert Hamilton, lived. He had been the last commander of the Smaaland's Dragoon Regiment, which had been stationed in Eksjoe, before being closed down."
In Eksjoe, he had bought one of the villas in the city, the "apotekargaarden", house of the pharmacist in English. The name was changed to "Margaretagaarden", i.e. house of Margareta, my mother. In Eksjoe, I continued the 3rd and 4th grade of school, this time attending every day. I was an average student, and had no difficulties to absorb the teaching. I liked history very much, learned to read runes and looked at old rune stones in the area. I found the middle age and knights fascinating, probably due to the tales Machen had been reading when I was young,
I also liked everything technical. When we still lived in Sjoetorp, I had been given a Meccano set as a Christmas gift, 1927, and I quickly learned to build the models of the instruction book. I remember that I had completed the building of a crane when my parents gave a dinner party and called me to show the crane to the guests. While in Eksjoe, I participated in an international Meccano competition, organized by the British Hornby company. I had made a model of a machine to saw ice in the lake, really
nothing very technical or complicated. Machen, the artist, made a sketch of my model, which became my entry. I didn't get any prize, but I received a drawing book, because of the nice sketch I had entered.
During the summers in Eksjoe, swimming was my favorite sport. I had learned breaststroke from Moeller, our chauffeur during the Sjoetorp years. Here I learned to crawl and to play water polo. I did also become a boy scout at age 9, which is much younger than the normal age entrance age of 12. However, I learned the Scout Law and to tie the various kinds of knots, and during a summer camp, I got my first experience in a sport called orientation. Basically, you get a map with two or three positions marked, and you are supposed to run to each one, using the map and a compass. I liked it and I think it later on in life influenced me to become a navigator, first a sea navigator and later on a flight navigator.
During the winters, I was skiing and skating on the lake Hundsnaesen. I also learned to play bandy, a sport similar to land hockey, played on ice, with a little read ball, on a course of the same size as a soccer course. I did also catch most of the children sicknesses like measles, etc, but not the whooping cough, even though my sister got it. However, I suffered from frequent colds with coughing and high fever, and had to spend several days in bed each time it happened. I think that the cold I got due to the ether anesthesia during my appendix operation had made my bronchi more sensitive than normal, and not until I started with flu vaccination has this situation improved. I also suffered from migraine, which I had inherited from my mother, together with her nervous temperament. When I got a migraine attack, I had to go to bed, normally meaning that the whole day was spoiled.
During my years in Eksjoe, we were visited by my half-brother Nils and his wife Ingrid, who spent the Christmas with us. Nils was an artist who had graduated from the Academy of Fine Arts. He had inherited a small fortune from his mother, and he spent the money on traveling and living in various countries. He later got divorced, and settled down in Portugal, visiting Sweden from time to time, exhibiting his paintings.
The bad times continued, and my father continued to lose money on the stock market, where he had kept his inheritance. In 1932, he and my mother decided to sell our villa, and move to Stockholm in the same year I had graduated from the 4th class, and been accepted at the first class of the secondary school. As I stated earlier, I was an average student with average marks. I obviously had some writing talent, because after having seen a film about paper production, I wrote a long essay about that, which my teacher presented to the headmaster, who called me and congratulated me. But in general, I was only an average student.
Here I have to mention that the entrance to the Eksjoe Secondary School first grade was limited to 30 students, out of maybe close to 100 candidates. The list of the students who had been accepted was posted on the door of the School. You had to pass the entrance examination with good marks to get on that list. For this reason, my father had devoted time to work with me on arithmetic and spelling. I was not too fond of his classes and homework in general, and preferred my spare time activities. Notwithstanding, as a result of his coaching, I passed the examination, but I did not get on the list of the 30 students accepted. My marks were obviously not high enough. But I was lucky, because in 1932 a parallel class was introduced, and I was among the students admitted to that class.
However, I spent very little time in the Eksjoe Secondary School, as in September that year, we moved to Stockholm. There we moved in to a 6-room apartment on a small street, Brahegatan, located in Oestermalm, the best part of the capital. My entrance examination marks from Eksjoe were good enough to get me accepted in the first class of Norra Real, one of the very best secondary schools in the capital. I spent the following 6 years at Norra Real, but I didn't graduate from that school, but from Palmgrenska Samskolan, to which school I transferred in 1938. I shall tell more about that later on.
While we were still living in Eksjoe, my father presented me with one of his books with the title of: Book of Inventions, Part 2, Forces of Nature and their Utilization. Although the book was old, published in 1901, and didn't contain any modern marvels, I studied it with great interest, reading about inventors like John Erickson and George Stephenson and scientist like Michael Faraday and Charles Wheatstone. I believe that the content of this book has influenced my life in many aspects.
As soon as we arrived in Stockholm, I spent all my spare time getting to know the city, walking on foot, as well as traveling around the city by streetcars and also to the suburbs by local trains. My father loved to take me and my little brother along to show us Stockholm, the city where he was born and had lived most of his live. Later on, I spent a lot of my time, visiting department stores, which was a completely new experience to me, as there were no department stores in Vaernamo or Eksjo. At the NK department store, I discovered the yoyo, and I got quite skilled and even participated in a competition. I am ashamed to have to admit that I spent hardly any time on homework as I ought to have done. The math teacher told my mother that "Oscar understands, but he is lazy". I am happy that he didn't tell her that I also was careless in arithmetic calculations, a fault I still suffer from.
I never became the ideal, hard working student because I had more interesting spare time activities, such as skiing and playing bandy and ice hockey. I even joined the 50 m relay swimming team of the school and joined one of the swimming clubs, Neptune. I did also build Meccano models, and participated in the annual Meccano competition of the NK Department Store. One year, I got the 4th prize and another year the third, but the year I had prepared my best model, a lifting crane of the kind that is on the cover of the Meccano Instruction book, I didn't get any, and rightly so, because even as the model looked good, when I was to demonstrate its function to the judges, the gear box failed. This taught me an important lesson: that function is more important than looks. I had spent too little time to see to it that the crane's mechanism functioned, and too much on making it look good.
Here I have to state that during my whole secondary school time, my mother took great interest in my work, and read my essays and German translations, and corrected me when required. She also kept close contact with my teachers, and I have her to thank that I managed to pass the various classes relatively well, and eventually graduate. I will tell more of this later on.
The first school year was soon completed, followed by 3 months of school holidays, which we spent at a guesthouse outside Eksjoe. I spent most of my time at the lakeside bathhouse, and passed the stipulations for a 2nd class swimming badge, entitled "the bachelor of swimming". A couple of years later, I obtained the 1st class badge as "master of swimming". Among the families at the guesthouse, was the one of a student of a parallel class to mine in Norra Real, the secondary school I went to, and we became quite good friends. His name was Lars Gyllensten. He was a gifted student, top of the class, and he later on became a medical doctor, famous author and the permanent Secretary of the Swedish Academy, which awards the Nobel Prize in Literature. I am proud of having been one of his best friends for several years.
The school holidays in 1934 were also spent at the guesthouse outside Eksjoe, and as the year before, I spent most of the time on one of my favorite sports, swimming. However, on the 1st of August, I broke my right arm, colliding on my bike with another bike. I remember that day very well. The person with whom I collided in a blind corner took me along on his bike to get me to the hospital. On the road we encountered my mother, who took over. I still remember awakening from the anesthesia, hearing the nurses talking about an aircraft accident that had occurred the very same day. I left the hospital with my right arm in a cast, which meant no more swimming that summer, and no more use of my right hand for several months. When the cast was finally removed, I had become quite good in the use of my left hand.
In 1935, I made too many arithmetical errors in the math examinations, and had to study during the summer holidays and take an examination at the beginning of the school year 1935/36. As a study guide, I took a correspondence course provided by the Hermods Correspondence Institute, which I brought along to study, during the school holidays, which my sister Gisela and I were to spend in Germany. As I have already told, my mother was German, and in Stockholm she had obtained a position with the German Tourist Bureau. She was also a member of the German Colony. My sister had joined the
German Colony youth organization, Colonie Jugend, but I had not joined, as the activity didn't interest me, and I was already a scout. The travel to Germany and stay there, as guests in the homes of German families, had been organized by the German Colony.
We left Stockholm by train, early in the morning, together with the other German or half German participants. The leader of our group was a young German man, who lived in Sweden. He was quite strict and kept us together during the trip with Prussian discipline, which I didn't much care for. We spent the first night on the train. I slept on a baggage shelter. Early in the morning, we arrived in Trelleborg, and continued by a ferry ship to Sattnitz on Ruegen island. I found the trip over quite interesting, as I had never before traveled on board a ship. I wandered around and looked at the ship, down to the railway cars on the lower deck and up to the upper deck and the area around the captain's bridge. From Sattnitz, we continued by rail, and arrived in Berlin in the evening, where we spent the night in a "Youth hostel". Early in the morning, we were waked up and continued by foot, carrying our baggage, to a railway station, that in my opinion appeared to be very far away. At the railway station, we were installed in different carriages, depending on our final destination. We all were carrying a card, hanging from our necks, which contained the details of our destination, including the name and address of the families with whom we were to stay.
We arrived in the evening and were given overnight accommodation by an administrator who told us that the original plan had been changed, and that we would continue the following day to our destination and host families, and so we arrived in Landau in der Pfalz, located in the province of Rhein-Pfalz. My sister was taken care of by the family of a teacher, and I was placed in the home of the porter of the office of a Government travel Agency,"Kraft durch Freude", in English "Force through Happiness". When they read my card, I remember the wife saying something to this effect about my sister and me: "Sie sind Majorskinder und sollen die Einfachheit kennenlernen", i.e. They are children of a major and they are supposed to learn about the life of simple people.
My stay with the Kramers I have in very good and positive memory. They didn't have any children, and they treated me as their own son. I got a very nice room with a typical German bed, and they took me along to visit many interesting places. Mr. Kramer had a motorcycle, and with me as a passenger, he showed me the city and surroundings. He also introduced me to his friends. In particular, I remember a bus trip to a town situated close to the river Rhine together with Mr. Kramer's "Kegelbrueder", i.e. his bowling pals. Most of them were old Nazi party members. Here I have to state that during this and the following two summer vacations, which I spent in Germany, I didn't meet a single bad person of the kind that later on became war criminals, though on the third summer, which I spent at the sailplane school at Grunau, in Riesengebirge, one of the students of my first class proved to be a Nazi of the worst kind. I will tell more about this later on.
We also visited several old castles, and my host arranged for me to travel with one of his friends, a traveling salesman. On these trips, I saw a lot of the area. I also got an entrance card to the municipal swimming pool, where I spent much of my time on swimming training. One night, I accompanied my host to a bicycle competition on a track around a sports field. I remember that I got quite sleepy in the morning, but it had been a nice experience. However, after a month, I was moved to another family. I think the reason was that my host family was leaving on vacation. My second host family treated me also in a very good manner. Herr Stoltz, the head of the family, was one of Landau's foremost pork butchers, and his wife assisted him in the shop. They had two children, a young boy and a girl. Annelise was my age, and had long, blond hair. She became my secret love that summer. In 1955, I visited the family, on the way up to Sweden from Ethiopia, and met her husband.
However, I was not only enjoying my time on sightseeing and in the swimming pool. I was also studying mathematics by correspondence. I found the course offered by the Hermods Correspondence Institute to be very good. My mother had also arranged for me to take weekly classes with a mathematics teacher, in order to be sure that I would pass the examination prior to the beginning of the autumn term. As I have already stated, I had been a lazy schoolboy, who enjoyed spare time activities more than school classes. However, the correspondence course somewhat changed my attitude, and I found that I liked mathematics, even though I still made arithmetical errors, due to carelessness. My German math teacher couldn't understand that I had failed and had to be examined in order to be moved to the next class. As a result of her coaching and the correspondence course I passed the examination well, and from then on I got good marks in mathematics.
One of the neighbors of my new host family had a son, Erwin Donauer, who became a good friend. He took me around in the city and the surrounding areas. I remember in particular an outing with him and his parents together with the employees of the company where his father worked. On another occasion, Erwin and I went by bike to the river Rhine, where we were swimming, close to the ferries and tugs, each one towing several barges. It might be a fantasy, or wishful thinking, but I seem to remember that we were swimming out to a barge, climbed on board and went upstream some 20 or 30 meters, and then swam back downstream, with good speed. Erwin and his friends also took me for a wine tasting, and I got lightly intoxicated. I remember in a letter to my mother I wrote that I had been drunk.
Another important memory from that time was a visit with my host family to Saarbrucken and the French border. The Saar province had become German that year, as a result of a vote by the inhabitants, who earlier were under French rule. When we went to the border, my hosts talked with some of the French people on the other side of the border, who all spoke perfect German. On another excursion, we visited one of the important castles, where a famous knight had lived. Unfortunately, the pleasure was spoiled for me, as I got an attack of migraine, and had to lie down in the grass and sleep while the others went around on a guided tour. My host family got very worried, and took me to a doctor the following day. The doctor met my mother, who arrived a couple of days later, on a visit in the car of one of her best friends, a Dutch lady. My mother explained to the doctor that I had suffered from migraine since I was very young, and there was nothing that the doctors could do about it. Curiously, 3 years later, when I stayed at the home of the Dutch family during the summer vacations, I would be cured, which I will tell about, later on.
The summer vacations were soon over, and we went back to Sweden in the same manner as we had arrived, under the Prussian leadership of the young German. On the way back, I caught a bad cold, and had to stay in bed about a week, following our arrival in Stockholm, and could not take my mathematics examination together with the other boys, on the scheduled day. However, I had a very nice math teacher, who offered to give me the examination in his home, as soon as I was in good shape again. I am pleased to say that I got a 10, and moved to the next class, the 4th grade.
My school, Norra Real, was one of the very best secondary schools in the country, and there were many applicants for the next grade, the first grade of the 4 year "gymnasium" in which grades 8 – 12 were called "Rings". The gymnasium had various lines, several for Latin and language studied and several for science studies. Norra Real offered science classes, and was considered to be a fore school for admission to the Royal Institute of Technology. For this reason, the competition for admittance to the 1st Ring of Norra Real was tough, and very good marks were required. Curiously enough, I managed to get good grades in all subjects, and was admitted to the first Ring of science studies in 1936.
During the summer of 1936, I participated in a Student Exchange Program. The first time of the summer, I spent with my exchange mate, Herbert Kueltz, in Erfurt in Riesengebirge, and the second part together with him at the guesthouse in Eksjoe. He still went to school, when I arrived, so I was left to myself during most of the days. Nevertheless, I visited his school and participated in a gym class. Gymnastics was one of my best subjects, but I knew nothing about the " barrier" or "rack" movements, in which he was an expert. During his spare time, we went on many interesting excursions with his parents and younger brother, His father was a medical doctor, and we went in his Audi, convertible, among others to Weimar, where I remember visiting the homes of both the famous authors Goethe and Schiller. I did also visit Wartburg and the castle where Martin Luther wrote the Catechism, and saw the spot on the wall, where he is said to have thrown a bottle of ink against the Devil.
We also visited Weimar, during a Parteitag of the Nazi party. Herbert and I climbed a tree, and saw Hitler and the important party leaders, passing by, below us. While in Weimar that day, a peculiar thing happened. Among the crowd of thousands of visitors, I encountered my mother. As I said above, she worked for the German Tourist Bureau in Stockholm, and was on a visit to Germany that I was not aware of. She met my host family, and kept up the contact with them during WWII, when Herbert died at Stalingrad.
Back in Sweden, during the School year, 1935/36, we had moved to an apartment, close to the church of the Oscar's parish. After having previously traveled by streetcar to the school, I now walked to school in about the same time as a trip with the streetcar would take, which required changes of lines. I got company, halfway of the distance, by one of my new classmates, Nalle Landstrom. We became good friends, and I spent many happy hours in his home together with him and his two sisters, one older than me and the other younger. In the same year, I began my studies for the confirmation, which took place in the Oscar Church at Easter, the following year. There was a class of 2 hours, each week, given by the head priest of the parish, Jan Hoff, a very good teacher. He was tough, and we had to learn the names of all the prophets, the titles of the chapters of the Old and New Testaments, as well as Luther's Catechism, and the 10 Commandments, followed by an explanation of each one.
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