How to learn Swedish in 1000 difficult lessons

The deed is done. Or rather, it's in our possession. The deed to the new apartment that is. The papers are all signed, so the place is officially ours.

In between signing away the old apartment and signing for the new apartment, the husband and I stopped in a café in Östermalm for a little lunch. Sitting at a table in the back, next to a set of old oven doors in an ancient white-tiled wall, I noticed a secret-service type with one of those plastic spiralled wires twirling from his ear and down his neck and into his collar.

"He must be here with a member of the royal family," said the husband. Or perhaps a governmental minister or something, I added.

Indeed, it turned out to be the former Miss Silvia Sommerlath, now Mrs. Carl G. Bernadotte, better known as the Queen of Sweden. And I never even saw her because it wasn't until after we'd left the place that the husband mentioned that she was sitting at a table with one of her girlfriends, in fact the very same table the hostess had offered to us earlier but we hadn't taken.

The Swedish word for the day is, of course drottningen, which means the queen.

- by Francis S.