“The formation of a Mongol army, the crowning of the living budda as emperor of Mongolia, the sending of troops south and east towards China, and many other things happened around christmas time, making us two Norwegians, who than lived together, unknowalble of which christmas we were going to have. However, things were relatively calm in Urga and we celebrated christmas peacefully, if it cannot be said, that it was joyful, it was after all christmas.

We lived in a quite small chinese house with paper windows, with more air holes than preferrable in 35 degrees below zero with wind. Our way of living was not elegant; we had a chinese chef, who claimed he had cooked for the Russians for years and that he was the best chef in Urga, which might all be true, though he fed us, as if we were pigs.

Under these conditions, the christmas dinner did not turn out how one might wish. I believe the soup was thicker on christmas eve, upon our request of course, we could then, as most other days, make sure we got something to eat without our chef’s gracious help. Back in those days there was a shop in Urga, that had a fairly good selection of canned food, sausages, ham and jam, and while we also had a bakery, where we cound find the most delicious kinds of russian bread, on christmas eve, and the rest of the holidays, we had enough food on the table.

We started on our buffet before the chef was done with his smear, and when he finally came rushing in with a plate of meatballs in his one hand and the incessant bucket hanging on the crook of the wooden ladle in the other hand, we were satisfied with keeping the meatballs and sent the soup bowl to the stable boy, so that he could water the horses a bit early that night, after all, it was christmas eve. The dogs got the meatballs, we had enough after all.”

Some years later, in 1914, Mamen travelled from Mongolia to Kalgan through the Gobi desert right upon christmas, in minus 50 degrees. He writes: