Two strangers got stuck on a train for two days in 1990. Here’s how they ended up married

Nina Andersson and her friend Loa hoped they’d have the train carriage to themselves.

When Nina peered her head around the door and saw the compartment was empty, she grinned at Loa and gestured happily.

It seemed like they’d lucked out. An empty carriage on an otherwise packed train.

“We thought this would be great, just the two of us. We spread out everything, so we could have a couch each to lie on,” Nina tells CNN Travel today.

“Then, all of a sudden we hear this big ‘thump, thump, thump,’ on the door.”

It was summer 1990 and 20-year-old Nina was in the midst of traveling from Budapest, Hungary, to Athens, Greece — part of a month-long rail adventure with her friend Loa.

The two friends had each bought a train ticket known as the Interrail or Eurail pass, allowing young travelers a period of unlimited rail travel around Europe.

“I’m Swedish, I was working at Swedish Radio at the time, and had saved up money for going on my Interrail,” says Nina. “I wanted to see all of Europe.”

Traveling by train from Budapest to Athens was set to take about four days, weaving south through eastern Europe. In Belgrade — which was then part of the former Yugoslavia, but is now the capital of Serbia — the passengers had to switch trains.

And that’s when Nina and Loa grabbed the empty compartment for themselves and settled in, ready to enjoy the extra space. Then, the knocking at the door.

The two friends met each other’s eyes. They both knew, in that moment, that their solitude was to be short-lived.

“And then behind the door we see three heads poking in,” recalls Nina. “It was a Scotsman, an Englishman and an Irishman. It was like the start of a joke. And I thought, ‘What is this?’”

The three men were friendly, apologetic, slightly out of breath. They explained they’d fallen asleep on their last train, and almost missed this one — in fact, this train had started rolling out of the station but suddenly slowed down. The three stragglers had managed to hop on as the train ground to a halt.

Nina and Loa warmed to the Englishman, Irishman and Scotsman right away, and moved their bags to make space.

The three men were a similar age to Nina and Loa. Early 20s. All carrying large backpacks and battered train timetables. The English guy, Steve, was a chatty bricklayer from London. The Irish guy, Paul, was polite and serious.

But it was the Scottish guy, Derek from Glasgow, who really took Nina’s attention. He’d led the charge into the carriage — somehow assertive, apologetic and charming all at once.

“I quite like the idea that he was so forward, but not rude. He was almost boyish,” Nina says. “He seemed different than the other two. He was interesting.”

Between introductions being made, travel stories swapped, snacks being shared, it took a little while for the group to fully take in that the train still hadn’t moved from Belgrade train station. It remained at a standstill, long after its scheduled departure time.

Eventually, word spread through the train to Nina’s compartment: Yugoslavian train workers were on strike. This train was not going anywhere anytime soon.

Nina could have worried about her travel plans going awry. About wasting precious time of her long-planned rail adventure.

But instead, she didn’t care. All she focused on was Derek.

Bonding on a stalled train

In 1990, Derek Barclay was 21 and studying to become a construction engineer. He’d saved up money from an unglamorous summer job building a prison to buy an Interrail pass.

“Then, I dumped my bag at my mum’s house and said, ‘I’m off to Europe.’ She was horrified,” Derek tells CNN Travel today.

“The idea was to go from Casablanca to Istanbul. But I never went to either. Along the way I met Nina and I got distracted …”

While Nina and Derek formally met for the first time on the stalled train in Belgrade, Derek had first spotted Nina on a busy station platform, some hours earlier, in Budapest.

When he spotted her sitting on a bench, smiling and laughing with Loa, Derek was struck by Nina right away. For a moment, he imagined getting to know her, what she might be like. Where she might be from, where she might be going.

But then Derek had ended up on a different train. He’d met and got chatting to Steve the Englishman and Paul the Irishman. The trio had shared a couple of beers, fallen asleep, and woken, with a start, in Belgrade, to a suddenly-empty carriage. That’s when they panicked.

“We woke up, and just ran down the railway line — because we’re just about to miss this train to Athens — we jumped on the train as it was pulling away, and then it stopped,” Derek tells CNN Travel today. “Apparently that’s what they had to do to get the strike official.”

When Derek, Steve and Paul opened the door to Nina’s carriage, Derek didn’t immediately take Nina in, focusing instead on the near-empty compartment.

“Two of them in there, this carriage for eight, they’d spread stuff everywhere. It was obvious it was a ruse to try and get people not to go in. And we thought, ‘We’re not having any of that,’” says Derek, laughing. “So we squeezed in, and that was that.”

It was only when he ended up sitting opposite Nina that Derek realized she was the woman he’d noticed on the Budapest train platform.

Then they got chatting, and didn’t stop. They talked about a shared love of nature. About Derek being a member of Greenpeace. About Sweden and Scotland.

“A conversation about life and the future, deep stuff,” is how Nina puts it.

Throughout, they kept steady eye contact, smiling and laughing together.

And it wasn’t just Nina and Derek who were enjoying themselves on the stationary train.

“It was loaded with Interrailers,” recalls Nina. “So it was a good atmosphere.”

And as the hours rolled on, the conviviality on board didn’t dampen. If anything, things only got jollier.

“Everyone was talking away, sharing stories, sharing food,” says Nina, who recalls being shocked when she learned Derek’s only available snacks were 10 cans of Heinz Baked Beans — a reluctant parting gift from his mother and little use on a train with no microwave in sight.

She fished out of her rucksack her own superior selection of food supplies.

“I’m a bit of a gourmet, so we had loaded off with cheese, bread,” says Nina, who shared her goods with Derek.

“I think that the way to a man’s heart is through to his stomach, as they say,” she adds, laughing.

Losing each other

Nina and Derek’s train remained stuck in Belgrade for two whole days.

Theoretically, there was nothing stopping passengers getting off. But everyone on board was concerned that if they did, the train would suddenly leave without them.

“We just didn’t know when it was going to move again,” says Nina.

By the time the train departed the platform — to excited cheers from the passengers — Nina and Derek felt like they knew almost everything about one another.

“They were really deep conversations. We really got to know each other,” says Nina. “We were sharing stories and found we had similar interests.”

Derek particularly enjoyed hearing about Nina’s job as a sound engineer, and she was intrigued that he shared a hometown with Glaswegian bands Simple Minds and The Blue Nile.

After a couple of hours of traveling smoothly through the Serbian countryside, the train approached the Greek border and started to slow down.

Then, suddenly, the passengers were ordered to disembark. It seemed the train chaos wasn’t over, after all.

“It was quite scary, because I remember it was very dark, and we had no information,” recalls Nina. “We were just chucked off this train towards a bus station.”

At the bus station, travelers “had to fight for space on a replacement bus,” as Derek recalls. They didn’t know why this was happening.

“By that point the five of us had bonded as a group and fought together,” he adds.

Eventually, the rail replacement bus reached Athens, Greece. From there, Nina and Loa were heading on to the Greek island of Aegina, where they were set to meet up with some other Swedish friends.

With a ferry to catch, Nina and Loa said a quick goodbye to Derek, Paul and Steve. Nina felt a little flicker of sadness at the idea of not seeing Derek again, at their conversation of the last few days finally coming to an end.

Derek also surprised himself by feeling sad.

“Interrailing, you meet new people for a day or two, three or four times a week,” he points out.

He’d adapted to other Interrailers appearing and disappearing from his life. But saying goodbye to Nina felt different.

But Derek, Steve and Paul had no pre-arranged commitments in Greece. And now Aegina was on their radar. After a day of strolling a little listlessly around Athens, the three guys decided to head to Aegina too — none of them quite admitting they were hoping to see Nina and Loa again.

Reuniting in Greece

Two days later, Nina, Loa and their other Swedish friends were spending a day swimming, sunbathing and relaxing on one of Aegina’s sandy beaches.

“Then we can see these three peely-wally boys coming towards us,” recalls Nina, using Scottish slang for “pale.”

“They looked kind of familiar. We thought they must be British, because they had no suntan yet. And sure enough, they were these three guys from the train.”

Nina couldn’t believe it. Loa was equally gobsmacked.

“We said, ‘All the islands in Greece. How could you find us?’” says Nina

It was immediately obvious that Derek, Steve and Paul ending up in Aegina wasn’t a coincidence.

“We got kind of a feeling they kind of liked our company,” says Nina.

“We found the five girls sunbathing topless,” adds Derek. “They were quite surprised.”

Over the next couple of days, Nina and her friends explored Aegina, accompanied by Derek, Paul and Steve.

The easy, free flowing conversation between Nina and Derek was quickly rekindled.

Their bond on the train was to all intents and purposes “just being friendly, just getting to know each other a little bit,” as Nina puts it.

“But once we were in Greece, I started to feel more,” she says.

It helped that they weren’t stuck on a stuffy train anymore, rationing cheese and bread. Nina and Derek were spending their days sunbathing and enjoying sunkissed, beautiful Aegina.

“Swimming, eating and trips to a cheap bar…” recalls Derek.

One evening, Derek and Nina went for a midnight swim, just the two of them, and shared their first kiss.

But all too soon, their time in Greece drew to a close.

“We went back home, me going to Sweden, Derek back to Scotland,” says Nina. “And I had never taken his address or phone number, nothing.”

Sending letters

Nina had left Greece feeling grateful for a “nice few days” with Derek, assuming the connection wouldn’t go any further.

“But one of my friends thought that she saw some sparks between us,” says Nina. “So she had asked Derek for his address on my behalf.”

Once they were back in Sweden, this friend asked Nina if she regretted not taking Derek’s details.

“Maybe it was a shame I didn’t do that,” replied Nina, slightly regretfully.

She’d spent the days following her return to Sweden putting together a scrapbook chronicling her Interrailing adventure — sticking in ticket stubs, writing down favorite memories. She’d realized many of these memories involved Derek.

And so when Nina’s friend revealed she’d taken Derek’s address on her behalf, Nina decided to send a postcard to Scotland.

“Just to say, ‘I’m back, I hope you’ve had a nice journey back home,’” says Nina. “I thought, ‘If he’s interested, I should hear back.’ “I knew it took about four days for a postcard to arrive, and it should take four days for a reply, if I get one.

I thought, ‘If I haven’t heard anything in two weeks, then I won’t hear from him at all.’”

After she mailed the postcard, Nina tried to avoid counting the days.

But right on cue, eight days later, a letter from Glasgow landed through Nina’s mailbox.

“Thanks for the postcard,” wrote Derek. “Now my mates will believe me when tell them I went swimming at midnight with a Swedish girl, they thought I just got drunk and fell in.”

“And from there on, we started writing letters to each other,” says Nina.

In his letters, Derek wrote about his construction job and friends in Glasgow. Meanwhile Nina told stories from the radio station. They swapped music recommendations and re-lived their favorite moments from Greece.

Time passed, and their correspondence continued. The letters weren’t obviously romantic. But they were long and conversation topics often went deep.

A Scottish adventure

In the summer of 1991, Nina visited Derek in Scotland.

The two reunited at Glasgow Central train station. Nina strolled off the train with a big perm, wearing a pair of overalls over shorts, carrying a rucksack.

While it still wasn’t entirely clear if this was a romantic visit, both Nina and Derek were pleased to see each other. And then Derek set about showing Nina around Scotland.

“We had just the two of us, a couple of days up in the Highlands,” recalls Derek. “A little silver Mini Metro, Crowded House in the cassette and visiting scenic spots — Loch Lomond, Glen Coe, Robert the Bruce statue, Aviemore…”

Then, after being, as he puts it, “AWOL in Scotland for three days” Derek had to attend his brother’s wedding, and turned up at his future sister-in-law’s door with Nina.

“I said, ‘This is Nina. Could she borrow a dress? She’s coming to the wedding tomorrow,’” recalls Derek.

Derek hadn’t mentioned Nina’s visit to his brother and future sister-in-law in advance — he wasn’t sure how things would pan out, and didn’t want to assume Nina would be interested in coming along.

But after their Highlands adventure, Derek wanted Nina to be his wedding date.

“That was my introduction to the family,” says Nina, of the moment she found herself standing, slightly awkwardly, on Derek’s future sister-in-law’s doorstep.

Derek’s future sister-in-law was, initially, less than impressed by the prospect of a last-minute extra guest. But she glanced between Nina and Derek, and then relented, dug through her closet and lent Nina a wedding-appropriate outfit.

“So then Nina came to the wedding and met the whole family,” says Derek. “And my mother introduced everyone as if she were my girlfriend.”

“I kept saying, ‘No, no, not a girlfriend, friend,’” recalls Nina.

Nina and Derek hadn’t had a conversation confirming they were officially dating — though they both wanted that to be true. But it was as though Derek’s mother had helpfully confirmed it for them. And after a while, Nina stopped correcting her.

A few months later, Derek visited Nina in Sweden, and the two went to Tärnaby in the Lapland mountains, where Nina’s brother kept a log cabin.

While meeting Nina’s six brothers was a little intimidating, Derek also felt welcomed by the family. And it was fun and exciting to see Nina’s home country through her eyes.

‘I’ll be there’

Following their time in Scotland and Derek’s trip to Sweden, Derek and Nina were officially a long-distance couple. They continued to visit each other when money allowed, and wrote letters regularly.

This state of play lasted for three years. But by 1994, the couple were starting to wonder how to close the distance between them.

“It takes a toll, because obviously we couldn’t see each other as often as we would like,” says Nina. “After three years, we started saying, ‘How do you feel about this? Do you want to live together?’”

After weighing the options and discussing the respective pros and cons of life in Sweden and in the UK, the couple decided that Nina would move to London, where Derek had recently relocated for work. Nina was still working as a sound engineer, and it seemed like London would offer some exciting work opportunities in her field.

“So then Derek proposed and I said, ‘Yeah, sure, I will be there,’” says Nina.

She headed to the airport with few possessions beyond her wedding dress (“It was stuffed under my arm,” says Nina) and a beloved boombox.

Nina and Derek were married in Renfrew, in Scotland, a town close to Glasgow. Derek’s sister, who worked for the local council, married the couple, and Nina took Derek’s last name, becoming Nina Barclay.

“It was so nice,” says Nina of their wedding day. “I’m from a big family — who all came with the food — so we had a real mix of Swedish culture and Scottish culture. It was memorable.”

“It was great,” agrees Derek, who says this was true despite the fact he was slightly hungover all day.

“The night before the wedding is when all Nina’s brothers arrived from Sweden. So we went for my stag night (bachelor party) the night before the wedding, which wasn’t a good idea in Glasgow.”

“I didn’t know that stag nights were so heavy in Scotland. I thought they were like in Sweden, quite civilized,” says Nina, laughing. “He was quite tired the next day.”

“You can see that in the photographs,” says Derek. “I don’t look well.”

Nina and Derek’s honeymoon was “one day in Oban” — a coastal town in the west of Scotland. Nina and Derek toasted their future over fish and chips, then returned to London where they moved into a small apartment in the city’s South Norwood neighborhood.

The couple’s first few years of married life were “very tough financially,” says Derek, but they delighted in each other’s company and in their joy at finally living together after years of long distance.

They made their own traditions, too.

“Saturday night entertainment in London was Radio 4, the Saturday Play (we had no TV) and some snacks from Croydon Market,” says Derek.

A couple years went by, and things slowly got a little easier financially. Then, when the couple discovered Nina was pregnant, Nina and Derek decided to move to Glasgow to be closer to family.

They spent four years in Scotland, welcoming their daughter Alice, before Nina got offered a job back in Sweden, at which point Nina and Derek decided to give life in Stockholm a whirl. A year or so later, Nina gave birth to their second child, a boy called Rubin. A few years later, their son Hugo followed.

35 years later

Fast forward to today and Derek and Nina still live in Sweden. They’ve been there since the late 1990s — bar a two-year stint where Derek’s work took the family to Shenzhen in southern China.

This period in China helped reinforce Derek and Nina’s bilingual kids’ multinational view on the world. Their parents’ origin story means they’ve grown up with the encouragement to “travel and see things, meet people, they can be the nicest of people,” as Nina puts it.

Their kids’ experiences, Derek adds, are worlds away from his own — his Interrail trip at 21 was the first time he’d left the UK.

“And then by the time our kids were 18, they had visited 24 countries,” he says. “It’s a different generation.”

On their 25th wedding anniversary, Nina and Derek took their two children on an Interrailing trip around Europe, revisiting some of their 1990 haunts. Derek took a photo of the couple’s daughter Alice sitting on the bench at Budapest train station where he first saw Nina. It’s now one of his favorite photos.

In 2024, Nina and Derek marked their 30th wedding anniversary with a more luxurious railway adventure, traveling from Victoria Falls on the border between Zambia and Zimbabwe to Cape Town in South Africa via rail company Rovos Rail, just the two of them.

“We still like to travel by train,” says Nina.

To mark their 30th anniversary, Derek also enlisted his daughter’s help to buy Nina a much-belated engagement ring. He was conscious they never really had a formal proposal back in 1994, and he’d always wanted to give Nina a ring.

“Alice helped me pick the ring,” says Derek. “What she would like now would fit with what Nina would have liked 30 years ago.”

Nina still has her scrapbook from the 1990 Interrailing trip. And in recent years, Derek and Nina were unexpectedly reunited with the dozens of letters exchanged during their long distance relationship.

When Derek and Nina moved to Sweden, they left a bunch of things in boxes in Derek’s mother’s Glasgow apartment — including, unintentionally, piles of letters tied with red ribbon.

“Then, when Derek’s mother passed away, it was totally forgotten, all this stuff in the attic,” says Nina.

Some months later, the next tenant of the apartment, a young woman, stumbled across the letters — curled and yellowed with time.

“She took it to the local council and said, ‘Look, this must be something from the wartime,’” says Nina.

This was despite the fact the stamps indicated the letters were from the 1990s.

“But she was just so excited, spotted them, thought she found something from the war, and handed them over to the county council,” says Nina. “It was sweet.”

The council workers quickly discounted this wartime romance theory and instead focused on the last name on the envelopes. They guessed the letters might have something to do with Derek’s sister, who had the same last name and still worked at the council.

When she was approached by her colleagues, Derek’s sister confirmed these were 1990s love letters between Derek and Nina, and reunited the missives with their writers.

Nina and Derek laugh a lot telling this story — especially the idea their ‘90s letters were mistaken for historically-important wartime relics.

But they’re also really grateful to have been reunited with these special mementos of the early years of their romance.

“They’re fun to look at occasionally, but we need to hide them before we die, so no one else gets to read them,” says Derek, laughing.

Today, Derek and Nina describe themselves as “best friends as much as spouses.”

They “always look out for each other,” says Derek.

And they’re always grateful that their railway adventures brought them together.

“We could have walked into the next carriage. We could have been somewhere else on the train and never met,” says Derek. “It was fate.”

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