Problems with Hibernate, the owning Session was closed

Hello!

This is probably a tricky question that I hope some one could give some hints about.

I get a strange Exception:
org.hibernate.LazyInitializationException: could not initialize proxy - the owning Session was closed

I get it at the line "customer.setsCountry(country.getName());" in this code:
package website.controller.action;

import java.io.*;
import java.util.*;
import javax.servlet.*;
import javax.servlet.http.*;
import org.apache.struts.action.*;

import website.controller.form.*;
import website.model.hibernate.*;
import website.tools.*;

public class NewCustomerFormAction extends Action
{

    public ActionForward execute (ActionMapping mapping, ActionForm form, HttpServletRequest request, HttpServletResponse response) throws IOException, ServletException
    {

        NewCustomerForm newCustomerForm = (NewCustomerForm) form;
          Customer customer = new Customer();
          customer.setsFName(newCustomerForm.getsFName());
          customer.setsSName(newCustomerForm.getsSName());
          customer.setsPassword(newCustomerForm.getsPassword1());
          customer.setsEmail(newCustomerForm.getsEmail());
          customer.setsAddress(newCustomerForm.getsAddress());
          customer.setsPostal(newCustomerForm.getsPostal());
          customer.setsCity(newCustomerForm.getsCity());


          Long countryId = new Long(newCustomerForm.getsCountryId());
          Country country = CountryService.getCountry(countryId);

          customer.setsCountry(country.getName());

          customer.setsPhone(newCustomerForm.getsPhone());
          customer.setnBYear(new Short(newCustomerForm.getnBYear()));
          customer.setnBMonth(new Short(newCustomerForm.getnBMonth()));
          customer.setnBDay(new Short(newCustomerForm.getnBDay()));
        customer.setsCountryId( Integer.parseInt( newCustomerForm.getsCountryId() ) );

        HttpSession session = request.getSession();
        session.setAttribute("customer", customer);

        return mapping.findForward("success");
      }
}

It looks like it has to do with Hibernate and loading classes that I do in this code:
package website.tools;

import java.util.*;

import website.tools.*;
import website.model.hibernate.*;
import org.hibernate.*;

public class CountryService
{
    public static synchronized Country getCountry(Long id)
      {
        HibernateUtil.getSessionFactory().getCurrentSession().beginTransaction();
        Session session = HibernateUtil.getSessionFactory().getCurrentSession();

        Country country = (Country) session.load(Country.class, id);
        //System.out.println( country.getName() );

        HibernateUtil.getSessionFactory().getCurrentSession().getTransaction().commit();
        HibernateUtil.getSessionFactory().close();

        return country;
    }
}

The funny thing is that if I uncomment this line:
//System.out.println( country.getName() );
It works!!!

But of course I do not want to do like that and I do not understand way. I guess Hibernate just load the parent instance, name is considered like a child or member I guess, but it is not in any relation table. The Country class looks like:
package website.model.hibernate;

public class Country
{
    private Long id;
    private String name;

    public Long getId()
    {
        return id;
    }

    private void setId(Long id)
    {
        this.id = id;
    }

      public String getName()
      {
          return  name;
      }

      public void setName(String  a)
    {
        name = a;
      }
}

The hbm.xml file looks like:
<?xml version="1.0"?>
<!DOCTYPE hibernate-mapping PUBLIC
        "-//Hibernate/Hibernate Mapping DTD 3.0//EN"
        "http://hibernate.sourceforge.net/hibernate-mapping-3.0.dtd">

<hibernate-mapping>

    <class name="website.model.hibernate.Country" table="countries">
        <id name="id" column="id">
            <generator class="increment"/>
        </id>
            <property name="name"/>

    </class>

</hibernate-mapping>

So if any one could give some hint or if you guys could suggest a better solution then the CountryService-class. Perhaps I have done a bad design??

I hope a have describe this problem in a good way, cause I am not sure what this depends on.

Best regards
Fredrik