2014 Nobel Prize Part 12: We're Outta Here!

Day 5: Homeward Bound - Friday December 12, 2014

Following several days of outrageously unique experiences, our surprise vacation was coming to an end.  We had a 10:15AM flight to get to, so we got up early – but not so early that we couldn’t enjoy one final breakfast buffet and give hugs to Sharon and Weo before grabbing a taxi back to the airport.  In another episode of "Nobel Prize Winners Are Just Like You and Me!", we're actually taking home one more suitcase than we arrived with - Sharon and Weo have graciously given us their dirty laundry so they don't have to lug it around for their second week in Sweden.

As to the various winners, they were all staying in Sweden to continue fulfilling their various obligations.  The day we left the winners all received their prize money.  In the case of the Chemistry guys they split the monetary award three ways.  Later that day they had yet ANOTHER banquet to attend, and then they all were sent off on a week-long tour outside of Stockholm.  In Weo’s case, he ended up speaking to some high school students and at one particular university, while his co-winners had similar engagements at other schools.  Weo’s schedule during that week following the awards was something that was noted in one of the things we’d received at the Nobel Desk when we’d first checked into the hotel.  Extra points to anyone who got this far in my write and recalled me talking about that many, MANY pages ago.

The Aftermath

Here I thought I’d mention what life is like for a “typical” Nobel Prize winner after they win the prize. Something to keep in mind is that Weo had already been a VERY busy guy for the previous 20 years or so. As his reputation built over the years he was very widely sought after to present at reasonably high profile scientific conferences, and he’d amassed a large collection of awards over a couple of decades that took him around the world. He was skilled in juggling his commitments to Stanford with his travels. On average he probably traveled about once per month, with a healthy dose of international travel.

So what happened after he was named a winner? Madness! EVERYONE wants a piece of a Nobel Prize winner. Stanford knew this and granted him leave for the year following his award so he had the freedom to accept just a SMALL FRACTION of the invitations. For over a year following his win he was averaging three trips per MONTH. Even now, five years after his award, he is constantly turning down requests to travel. If he wanted to (and had no ethics, since he says that many of the requests sound pretty sketchy – some are almost literally along the lines of “hey, come out here to the grand opening of my luxury island so I can show you off to the investors”) he could still have a crazy travel schedule.

In addition, Nobel winners start receiving invitations to gather together for high-profile “think tank” sorts of things, leading to trips to places like Davos for the World Economic Forum. Once there I think they probably go to strip clubs – but no doubt all the strippers are just earning money to put themselves through their PhD programs.

For those of us who DIDN’T win the Nobel Prize but DID attend the events of Nobel Week life is also different. We experienced something that almost no one in the world gets to take part in and have memories that are priceless!

Thanks for reading – if you got to here I know you’ve invested a lot of time and I hope you found it worthwhile. Feel free to submit any comments – I’d love to know who found this online!

What happens next?  Uh, well – you reached the end.  Didn’t you notice?  Amuse yourself by reading something else here…or go do something else entirely.  I’m not the boss of you!

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2014 Nobel Prize Part 11: Just a Tourist

Day/Night 4: The Nobel Museum - Thursday December 11, 2014

We spent Thursday as tourists, while Sharon, Weo, and a small handful of guests were off to a taping of a BBC program called "Nobel Minds".  This program was being hosted by a Sudanese-British TV commentator named Zeinab Badawi who is (apparently) quite well known in the UK.  Coincidentally, we had met her on the elevator the night following the concert.  It was immediately apparent that she was someone used to being in the public eye, as she wasted no time in introducing herself and learning our names.  When I told her we were there in support of W.E. Moerner she shifted into reporter mode and asked me to confirm that he really preferred "W.E." rather than "William", and then checked the pronunciation of his last name. 

Being a tourist in Stockholm in December can be a bit challenging as the days are so short.  From an astronomical point of view the day is about 8 hours long, but from the perspective of your own eyeballs the day doesn't really seem to start until around 930A or so and it is already getting dark by 2P (and feels like night by 3P).  So there's a certain pressure to get stuff done between 10A-2P during "the day".  On that note we head over to the Royal Armory - which I'll skip recounting other than to note that Swedish kings seem to have a long history of getting shot in the head during battle - and then ended our day at the Nobel Museum.

If we had been "normal" tourists, the museum would have held little attraction to us.  It is reasonably small and a bit sterile in the way it presents materials.  Of course, when you have a Laureate in the family and it is Nobel Week then the museum offers a few treats that are pretty special.  The first of these is that there are several black, back-lighted display panels (obelisks may be a better description) immediately behind the front desk, one for each discipline.  On one side are photos and summaries of the winners and their topic, and on the back side is a TV displaying media images related to the winners. 

As you walk into the museum there is a small cafe on your left where you can grab a sandwich or soup (which we did), and the 10-12 small tables there offer up 40-50 black chairs of the bent wood variety.  Turns out each chair is numbered, and if you turn it over you'll discover that previous winners have signed the bottom of the seat.  The chair I was sitting on, for example, had 5 different winners (from 5 different years) on the bottom.  This year's winners had already been to the museum (on the previous Sunday) and signed their own chairs, which were set aside near the front entrance and were sitting up-ended on a small table.  Visitors could easily walk up and review the bottoms of each chair.  The three Chemistry winners had all signed the same chair.  Perhaps in future years other winners will add their signatures, but for now their chair is exclusively their own.

Yes, you can place your butt next to Nobel Prize winners in the cafe of the Nobel Museum.

By the way, the equation on the bottom of the chair, just above their photos?  That’s Abbe's Law, and for several hundred years it was the explanation for why seeing a single molecule was going to be an impossibility.  Weo basically thumbed his nose at Abbe and did the impossible.

In the back of the museum was a small display containing items donated by this year's winners.  Again, tradition is that the winners bring along something related to their achievement.  In Weo's case he had brought along - among other things - a huge paper roll that looks something like an EKG or EEG but is, in fact, the physical evidence collected 25 years ago that first showed he had captured a single molecule.  The most interesting part of the museum, in my opinion, is the permanent exhibit they have displaying about 30 of the more interesting donated items - will any of this year's donations find their way into the permanent display? Only time will tell.  <dramatic organ chord>

Contributed artifacts from the Chemistry winners.  The photograph shows something that Eric Betzig (co-winner) setup in his living room to do something that eventually led to a Nobel Prize.  Our living room has a chair that our cat is slowly shredding with her claws.  I'm not sure that's going to win us any awards.

Also in the back was a "interpretation" of the winners' work by...fashion design students.  Each discipline was represented by a dress design that was supposedly inspired by the winning topics.  The Chemistry "dress" was black and had "meaningful" layers of "decoration" adorning it.  Personally, I thought this was "bullshit" and qualified as "ludicrous" and "butt ugly".  We agreed we don't understand "fashion".

So, you see how this represents the Chemistry award, right?  Yeah, neither did we.

Finally, snaking across the ceiling of the central hall of the museum is a motorized track (similar in concept to what you see at the dry cleaners) from which hang hundreds of cloth panels, each one with a picture and short bio of a previous winner.  Most of the panels remain bunched together in sort of a holding area before being launched on their closed loop journey where they spread out and can be read.  I think the panels are randomly ordered - they certainly aren't in chronological order as I just happened to see Obama's panel next to someone from the early 1900's.  Not sure if this year's winners were already making their journey above our heads or not.

We made a quick stop in the gift shop - we had a request to pick up a "Nobel Snowglobe" but - shocking! - such an item doesn't exist.  A hand-printed sign did exhort us to buy a plastic compass (in the area with kid-focused stuff) as a tribute to the 2014 Medicine winners [who won for describing how your brain functions as a GPS].  We made a cursory search for something related to the Chemistry prize but found nothing.  We could have purchased a flatware setting as used at the Banquet.  Turns out that the flatware was commissioned from ["from" or "by"???  not sure what the right term is...] a Swedish designer in 1991 for the 90th Nobel anniversary.  However, since we aren’t like to be serving our own red deer entrée any time soon there seemed no point in buying the flatware, so we refrained.

The Nobel Museum borders a small town square which was hosting a Christmas market while we were there.  Several of the stalls featured ornaments.  While some travelers collect keychains or refrigerator magnets, we like to commemorate our travels with an ornament so we were quite happy to spend a few minutes looking at the offerings of several stalls before we found The Ornament That We Must Have.

Stockholm is beautiful city.  We think.  We're not really sure given that it was pitch black for all but about 5 hours each day.  

Darkness was setting in, so we made our way back to the hotel so we could relax a bit before dinner.  We were on our own this night.  Sharon and Weo (and the other winners) were dining with the King and Queen at the Palace this night and – for some reason – we weren’t invited.  How rude!  Weeks of learning new ”knock knock” jokes to entertain fellow diners WASTED.   So we ended up at a very average Italian restaurant a short walk from the hotel called Café Milano.  How average?  Well, as I wrote this summary in 2019 I looked it up on Google Maps and although it still shows up it is listed as “Permanently closed”. 

A cultural observation: during our time in Stockholm we kept noticing many windows throughout the city displaying illuminated 7 branch electric candelabras.  Since we were there in December (the Nobel Awards are always presented on December 10, which was Albert Nobel’s birthday) and Christmas was coming up we initially guessed that there was some kind of holiday tradition at work here.  At the Nobel Banquet we learned from one of our table mates (who was acting as the attendant to one of the other Chemistry winners) that people placed these in their windows simply because Sweden was so DARK in December, and this was a way to try to light up the darkness a bit!

What happens next?  Tune into the next episode by selecting another page from the "2014 Nobel" menu, above.  These instructions cheerfully supplied as a public service for those who haven't won a Nobel Prize.

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2014 Nobel Prize Part 10: PARTY!!!!!

Night 3: The Nobel Awards Banquet – Wednesday December 10, 2014

City Hall is a large stone building surrounding a large courtyard.  When we arrived we queued up outside, having not yet made the turn into the courtyard.  There was a small press contingent outside.  One TV reporter saw Robert and Andrew and made a beeline for them, hoping to get their/our agreement to appear on TV.  This wasn’t something we were interested in doing, so we politely declined and the reporter respectfully backed off.

Standing behind us was a small contingent of Japanese guests (likely there in support of one of the Physics Laureates).  The Japanese press has been a HUGE fixture of these awards.  They have been camped outside the hotel practically 7x24 and whenever they saw anyone vaguely Japanese in appearance there was a minor feeding frenzy.  This time was no different.  One or two cameramen dove through our line, literally pushing Andrew out of the way, and stuck their cameras up the nose of this poor woman.

As we turned the corner into the driveway leading to the courtyard a number of cars bearing the symbol of the Nobel Committee drove past us.  Each Laureate was assigned both an attendant, who is supposed to manage all their scheduling details and accompanied them everywhere, and a car+driver.  We weren’t sure if these were the Laureates arriving or not.  More likely it was other VIP guests, like prior year winners.  In the courtyard we could see lines of children carrying burning torches who were apparently there to light the way for honored guests.  By the time we got inside the courtyard they were apparently done – we saw the torches being collected and the kids trooping away.

We missed seeing the torches lit up, so I grabbed this from the Nobel web site.  If I hadn't told you that, this would have been plagiarism.  Now that I cited it, we can call it research.

As we finally reached the entry doors we once again handed over our invitations and passports as ID.  The Banquet invitations included a barcode which was scanned, and finally we entered City Hall, deposited our coats, made what might be the last bathroom stop until the end of the evening, and found our seats. 

To find your seat, you picked up a small booklet from one of the tables on other side of the lobby.  The booklet was above 50 pages and about the size of those annoying subscription cards that fall out of every magazine you ALREADY subscribe to.

The front section of the book is an alphabetical index where you would find your table and seat number.

The back section had diagrams of each table, showing you exactly where you were located along the table.

If you successfully found your place you were rewarded by finding your place card sitting on your place setting.  If you failed to find your place everyone around you was obligated to shout "NEENER NEENER NEENER" loudly.

We were at table 11, along with Daniel and Stef, Jeff and Lise, Randy (cousin) and Burr and Barb Stewart (Burr is Weo’s best friend from college – they were Best Man at each of the other’s wedding. The table seats 30, so there are others present.

Now, a bit more about the seating.  Table A is the so-called “Table of Honor” seating 100 and it runs down the central spine of City Hall, at the base of the grand staircase.  There are twelve 30-person tables at right angles to either side of the ToH (for a total of 24 more tables).  Finally there are another 40 tables of varying sizes (smallest is 10 people) placed throughout the hall ultimately seating 1300 people.

To serve these 1300 people are 200-250 waiters.  Our table had 4 waiters assigned to it, two on each side.  The waiters closest to the ToH each handle 10 guests, while the other two waiters each only handle 5 guests.  For each activity, whether serving or clearing, the staff all come out in large lines and take their places and wait.  Half of them are facing the Grand Staircase and watching the Head Waiter, the others have their backs to it and are therefore watching the waiter across from them.  At some point the Head Waiter, like a conductor, raises both arms and separates his hands, which is the signal for the waiters to begin serving or clearing.  As a result of this, the timing of service is impeccable.  The waiters move down their line of guests in almost perfect synchronicity.

Given the way we were seated, I’m convinced that the seating team made an error in our case.  Our family of 2 parents and two kids was seated “wrong”, in my opinion.  Andrew, the youngest of our group, was placed across the table from Eileen, me, AND Robert.  At a minimum, I believe they should have (and probably intended to) put the youngest kid between both parents instead of what they did.  But even if they accidentally transposed the names I think they should have put Eileen and I on opposite sides of the table, with one of the boys next to each of us.  Fortunately, even at age 9 Andrew was tremendously comfortable sitting where he was assigned so we decided not to rock the boat and swap the boys around.

At each of our places when we first sat down was a small plate with two kinds of bread, lots of silverware, a small waterglass, 3 wine glasses (ultimately for a champagne with the appetizer, red wine with dinner, and dessert wine), and a covered soup bowl.  The tables also featured some flower decorations and candelabras on the ToH.  We were served champagne – the boys are instead served Pepsi – and we chatted amongst ourselves for a few minutes.  According to the Nobel Banquet website, the “more than 60 tables comprise no fewer than some 7,000 porcelain pieces, 5,400 glasses, and 10,000 items of silverware.”  You know, a typical Tuesday night at our place.

The place settings.  You have to have some place to dump the slop we're going to be served.

The main feature in the room is the Grand Staircase.  There are about 8 steps leading up from the floor, a large landing, and then the stairs turn ninety degrees and continue up from what I’d guess is another 16 steps or so to the upper balcony.  Two trumpet players appeared at the landing and played a fanfare, which was one of the less subtle signals that it was time for all to rise.  The grand entry of the ToH now began, led by the King (who was escorting Medicine Laureate May-Britt Moser, the only female Laureate).  Then the Queen (escorting another Laureate) and so on.  Weo arrived on the arm of Princess Christina, the King’s sister, while Sharon was escorted by the Prime Minister (who, apparently, had just suffered a crushing defeat at the polls within the last couple of days).  The parade was accompanied by orchestra music (live? recorded?  not sure…) and the two trumpets.

The day after the banquet, one of my co-workers had sent an email to my colleagues with a couple of photos of the event that had already been posted to the Nobel website.  I annotated those photos and sent them back to both my family and co-workers so they could get a sense of just where we were.  The first shows the entry of all the Table of Honor folks down the Grand Staircase, while the other shows most of one side of the hall.

The honorees enter, escorted by various members of the royal family and other assorted dignitaries.  C'mon folks.  Sit down.  We're all getting hungry.

Finally, all sat down.  Two traditional toasts were offered.  The President of the Nobel Academy stood and offered a toast to the King.  He literally said “I propose a toast to the King” and then said nothing more.  We stand for this…and stand…and stand.   Not for very long, but basically, we’re all waiting for someone to say “To the King!” or “Mud in your eye!” or something so we can drink…but this isn’t how it’s done.  Having proposed that we toast the King we’re apparently supposed to simply take a drink.  After 8-10 seconds of feeling awkward (and seeing the same thing reflected at other tables) we sheepishly finally all took a drink and sat down.  Now the King rises (and this is the ONLY time he stands and we remain seated) and he proposed a toast to Albert Nobel.  We get how it works now and quietly clink glasses with each other, drink, and sit.

Just chillin' with the gang.

There are a few more minutes of chitchat and then the lights dim.  Two members of the Royal Ballet have appeared up on the landing of the Grand Staircase and perform a modern dance number.  There are 3 such numbers on the program, and it turns out that one will precede each menu course.  We will all debate later whether or not we liked the dances and whether or not we “got them”.  (I liked the last one, not sure I “got” any of them).  The first two dances are set to Beethoven, the last to Van Morrison (!).  Sharon later tells us that one of the ministers at the ToH – clearly someone with opinions about dance – very pointedly turned his back to the second (and only the second) performance and refused to watch.  There were some parts of the second dance which could have been interpreted as symbolizing violence.  Whether that was the reason for the disgusted reaction of that guy or not is unknown.

Dancers from the Royal Ballet perform for our amusement.  Dance, peasants!  Dance!

The first course was “Cream of Cauliflower Soup, mosaic of red king crab, peas and lemon-pickled cauliflower florets”.  Service began with the waiters removing the tops of the covered soup dish to reveal the liquid-less collection of ingredients carefully arranged on the bottom of the bowl.  Then steaming pitchers of cream of cauliflower were poured into each bowl.  My table neighbor Barb was vegetarian, which was one of the dietary restrictions guests were asked to submit several weeks in advance.  As a result of this, her bowl contained something else in place of the “mosaic of red king crab” and she actually got mushroom consommé instead of cream of cauliflower.  We decided that vegetarians were being given a full vegan meal.   The soup is generally judged as “meh”.

All the food photo are courtesy of the Nobel web site.  We were generally too busy eating and enjoying ourselves to take pictures throughout most of the evening.

Despite the high standards of service, there was actually a bit of a mixup during this course.  You may recall that I said that the two waiters supporting our 15-person side of the table split up the work such that one waiter handled 10 people and the other handled 5.  I was the 10th person handled by the first waiter, and when he finished pouring liquid into Robert’s (9th person’s) bowl he left – without giving me any broth!  I quietly mentioned this to the waiter serving Barb when he came out with her mushroom consommé, and eventually I ended up getting mushroom consommé (not the intended cream of cauliflower) poured into my bowl.  I consoled myself with the thought that I probably had a totally unique first course.

The main course was “Spiced loin of red deer, carrot terrine, salt-baked golden beets, smoked pearl onions, potato puree, and game jus”.  The potatoes were brought out in a bowl and were passed around the table, along with sauce bowls.  The rest is served up off a platter to us individually.  Barb’s “meat” is, of course, something else formed to look like the meat filets.  Overall, the main course is excellent.  By the way, we are encouraged to believe that the King has personally hunted and shot the deer for our enjoyment, as this was apparently a tradition at one point.

Yum.  Not shown in this photo were the mashed potatoes that were passed around the table.

Following the clearing of dinner and the 3rd dance interlude, it was time for dessert. The traditional dessert parade began.  The lights go down and the wait staff started a giant two line processional down the Grand Staircase with silver platters on their shoulders.  Each platter, in addition to holding our desserts, also has a giant sparkler on it (an homage to Nobel dynamite) throwing off a shower of sparks.  In an incredible display of timing and showmanship, each sparkler goes out within a couple of steps after the each waiter steps off the last step onto the main floor.  The parade ends with the 4 main chefs, giving all a chance to applaud the food.

Dessert makes a dramatic entry.

We were served “Mousse and sorbet of wild dewberries from Gotland, saffron panna cotta and brown butter sponge cake”.  The sorbet was slightly larger than a golfball, the two mousse balls and two panna cotta balls were all about large melon-ball size, and the two sponge discs were about nickel size.  Dessert was judged excellent.

I'm sure this was all really healthy...but who cares, really?

Finally, coffee and tea were offered, along with brandy or punsch (some kind of punch-like liqueur) and the Laureate toasts were offered.  This started with a parade of college students, each bearing a flag from their university.  They lined the top section of the Grand Staircase and wrapped around the top section of balcony,  so they were overlooking all the diners.  A toastmaster introduced each speaker.  The toastmaster is a student who holds the role for four years.  This year it was a young lady who had SERIOUS linguistic skills – during the night we would hear her use English, Swedish, French, and Japanese will ease.  As each toaster was introduced, they were escorted by another student up the bottom section of the stairs to a podium on the landing, and were later be escorted back to their seat at the end, during which time the student shook their banners with enthusiasm.

Each discipline had one of the winners offer a toast.  I don’t know how the Chemistry guys decided, but ultimately their toast was be offered by Stefan Hell.  I think tradition says the oldest winner does it, but Weo didn’t feel like he had to insist on doing this.  The Physics guys go first.  Their Japanese-American winner handled the duties, but he still had a thick accent.  His toast was a bit stiff in format – he thanked the Academy and then gave a short “this is why blue LEDs are important, they are great for the environment, they can powered via solar power…so we can bring light to 1.5B people w/o electricity” speech and finally thanked “their colleagues and sponsors”.  Chemistry was next, and Stefan gave a nice little speech that recalled a comment by Schrodinger made 80 years ago during HIS speech that declared that no one would ever be able to see a single molecule “…until one of us, W.E., proved him wrong”.

Then came Medicine, which was delivered by John O’Keefe.  We had been introduced to him a few days prior at breakfast.  He gaves a charming speech, including thanks to the chefs for configuring the dessert in a hexagonal pattern reminiscent of something in their award-winning research.  This evoked a nice laugh…and left us wondering whether the plating of dessert was, indeed, intentionally referring to this.  Frankly, none of us doubted that this was a distinct possibility.

John appeared to be laboring slightly in his speech – his breathing appeared a bit strained.  It turned out that he had a horrible upper-respiratory infection and his participation in the next day’s “Nobel Minds” TV taping and the private dinner with the King and Queen was questionable.  (In fact, he would miss both of them due to illness).  His week of post-award travel around the country had already been cancelled as he was too ill to continue and would, in fact, fly home a week earlier to receive additional medical care.  A shame!

Finally, both the Literature and Economics winners spoke.  They both spoke in French so the details were lost on us.  I assume they were telling dirty jokes.

Dinner and speeches done, the music started up again, all rose, and the ToH retreated up the stairs.  For the Steins, the night was over.  We were not going to go upstairs for dancing.  Instead, we picked up our coats and boarded the bus (we were now back to our luxury buses) for the ride back to the hotel.  Had we been able to stay we could have gone upstairs for a couple of hours of dancing.  S&W and other Laureates got a quick private audience with the King.

All the Chemistry winners with wives, plus King and Queen.  I think they're going bowling after this.

Several in Weo’s group (including S&W, Daniel and Stef) also attended the post-Banquet “Nobel Nightcap”, which is a private (i.e. no press) party hosted each year by a different university.  I’m not sure the details of this year, but as a student-organized thing booze and loud music figure prominently.  S&W had intended to spend no more than 20 minutes there, but it turned out that a friend of Daniel’s from college was part of the organizing committee and was assigned to them as their “Ambassador”.  That definitely made the experience more enjoyable for them and they ended up getting back to the hotel around 230A as a result.

What happens next?  Tune into the next episode by selecting another page from the "2014 Nobel" menu, above.  These instructions cheerfully supplied as a public service for those who haven't won a Nobel Prize.

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2014 Nobel Prize Part 9: Wow - This is Really Happening, Isn't It?

Day 3: The Nobel Awards Ceremony – Wednesday December 10, 2014

After the now traditional morning buffet – at which time Sharon introduced us to John O’Keefe, one of the winners for Medicine – we took a look outside at the cold and now rainy weather and decided that our day was going to be busy enough with the afternoon Awards Ceremony and evening Awards Banquet, so we ended up staying in all morning and early afternoon.   That wasn’t too much time to kill as we had to start getting ready around 1:30 in the afternoon.

The Awards and Banquet are strictly white-tie and black tailcoats for the men, and as we started prepping we heard Robert calling out from next door that his shirt seemed pretty tight.  “Suck it up” we called, assuming he was just being a difficult teenager.  When he put on the jacket and threatened to bust the seams we realized with horror that the suits delivered the day previously to our room for the boys were NOT the suits that had been fitted for them.  What we had received were the suits for the two (younger) sons of one of the Physics winners.  Unfortunately, we were so close to our departure time that we had no opportunity to try to rectify things and see if we could swap clothing.  Fortunately, although things were tight they weren’t impossible – had our guys been bigger or the Nakamura kids smaller things could have gotten VERY stressful VERY quickly.  We kicked ourselves for not having the boys do a trial run the day before when we first got the suits delivered from the tailor.  NEXT time we go to the Nobel Awards we’ll be more careful.

Full disclosure: the collars are starched.  By the end of the evening I had severe chafing from mine.

The Awards took us back to the nicely lit up Concert Hall again.  Unlike the previous night’s concert, the weather today had been cold and rainy throughout.  We happened to be on the first bus to leave, and when we arrived the doors to the concert hall hadn’t yet opened.  So we all ran up the stairs and huddled under the meager overhang in what was thankfully just barely a mist at this point.  Had it been even a mild drizzle we all would have been soaked in just the few minutes we stood outside, waiting for the doors to open.  Our 200-250 bus-ferried passengers were among the earliest arrivals.  The general public apparently started arriving a bit after we did.

The Golden Ticket.  You would not believe how many Wonka Bars I had to eat to get this.

Once again our invitations – which also doubled as our Banquet invitations – had our seating assignment on them.  This time, the choice family seats were on the main floor.  We were in row 5 on extreme house right, which provided us with perfect viewing of the Laureates who would be sitting onstage diagonally across from us on stage right.

The overall layout onstage was of rows of chairs set in a shallow V-formation, with the apex of the V upstage center.  There were three rows on stage right: the most downstage row of 11 chairs for the Laureates were at stage level and then two rows on shallow risers behind them were for previous Laureates.  On stage left there were three rows on risers for members of the Nobel Academy, and in front of them at stage level (and consequently immediately in front of us) were 4 gilt chairs arranged in two rows for the King and Queen (front row) and Crown Princess Victoria and her husband.  Finally, at extreme downstage left was a table upon which the Nobel Diplomas and medals were stacked, waiting to be handed over.

About 50 minutes before the start.  The general public hasn't yet arrived, so we have an opportunity to take pictures in front of the stage.  That's my sister (and Weo's wife) on the right.  The chairs for the Royals are just over her shoulder.

Prior to the ceremony’s start at 430P we did have time to take some pictures standing in front of the stage in our finery.  Things were timed such that we arrived by 330P and the concert hall was fundamentally filled by 400P.  Broadcast cameras were everywhere (as they had been for the concert).  The royal box from last night was now given over completely to a large crane-mounted camera, which was just one of the 7 cameras I could see – and I’m sure there were others I couldn’t find.  From Weo’s group, we were joined in Row 5 by family only including (moving from house center to house right) Sharon, Daniel, Stef, the four of us, Randy (female, Weo’s cousin) and Jeff and Lise.  Everyone else was somewhere else, up in one of the balcony levels.

The members of the Academy and former Laureates wandered onto stage.  Literally – they didn’t have any “official” entrance time, so straggled into place between 4P and 430P until those seats were filled.  The members of the Stockholm Royal Symphony Orchestra were behind and above the stage, up in the organ loft – but in full view.  Again, there was a drum tattoo, some standing, and the 4 royals came onto stage looking like a G&S quartet.  The orchestra launched into music and the crowd sang their “Yea, King!” song (which the King himself modestly does NOT sing).  Everyone then sat down.

Everybody's here, so let's get going!  We're in the 5th row, from just right of center and extending to the right.  You can't see us, but I know we're there.  (Truthfully, I can just pick out my sister in her burgundy dress.)

Opening remarks by the President of the Nobel Academy.  A musical interlude.  Then the awards started.  The basic outline was the same.  The head of the Committee for each award made remarks in his or her native language.  All remarks began with the boilerplate intro of “Your Royal Majesty, Your Royal Highnesses, Nobel Laureates, ladies and gentlemen…”  We could follow along with English translations in a booklet everyone was given at entry.  The remarks talk about the work done by the winners and why it is significant.  The remarks always concluded with something along the lines of “Name of winner(s) [at which point the winners for that particular discipline stood up], it is my honor and privilege to award you the Nobel Prize for <your discipline>.  When your name is called, please come forward and accept your award from the hand of the King”.

Now came the highly choreographed presentation of the prize and Royal Handshake.  I believe the recipients were told to support the King so that he didn’t topple off to his left due to the weight of all the crap hanging off of him.  Maybe.  Not sure.  Also note the grimace of pain on Weo’s face due to the effects of the Royal Joy Buzzer hidden in the King’s right hand during this otherwise solemn moment.

Wow.  He did it!

OK.  So maybe that’s not quite true.  But it IS true that there is tremendously meticulous preparation behind the presentation of the award.

The King first stands up (meaning that everyone else does, too) and moves to center stage, where he is met by the winner.  Now some tricky stage management happens.  The guy manning the awards table follows the king and passes him the diploma and medal.  The recipient accepts the diploma with both hands and holds it flat, parallel to the ground.  The king then places the box with the medal on top of the diploma, which the recipient hopefully secures with his left thumb, while simultaneously releasing the diploma from his right hand.  They then shake hands as a trumpet fanfare sounds from up left, and then from somewhere diagonally opposite at the back of the concert hall (a very nice effect)!  The king backs away a few steps and nods his head, at which point the winner bows to the king.  The king turns away and walks back to his seat while the winner turns slightly upstage to bow to the Academy, then the winner turns around to face the audience, takes a couple of steps to center stage (placing himself in the middle of the ornate gold “N” in the carpet) and bows to the audience’s applause.  The winner then retreats to stand back by his chair while this process is repeated for any additional winners in the discipline.  Once all awards in the category are handed out the King sits (so we sit) and there’s some kind of musical interlude, and we move to the next award.

The award/handshake/bow sequence is so important that there had been a rehearsal the day before for all the recipients to practice.  One thing that was made clear is that deviation from the process is NOT welcome.  Apparently, one year a recipient, upon taking center stage for his bow to the audience, thrust his arms up in the air in his excitement.  This is Bad Form.  How bad?  When the ceremony was replayed on TV later that night this incredible breach of etiquette was edited out.

After the last award and musical interlude, everyone stood and the orchestra played the national anthem.  The Royals exited the stage (and for the first time I noticed that there were also Royals in the first row of the audience – they, too, were leaving).  The orchestra played exit music while the audience left…but the families remained and we all went up onstage for hugs and ad hoc pictures.

After the ceremonies families are invited onstage to take more photos.

After about 15-20 minutes Weo’s attendant came over and took the diploma and medal into safekeeping and told S&W that they needed to move on, so the rest of us headed outside in order to be bused over to the Banquet.

Last night the buses only had to contend with the 200-250 guests staying at the hotel.  Tonight we have to get 1300 people from the Concert Hall to City Hall – so instead of our 6 luxury buses we were directed to an endless stream of city buses (“bendy buses”) that have “NOBEL” on their signboards.  These buses were definitely SRO – so we were standing up wedged together in our ties and tails or ballgowns.  However, once aboard we were deposited at City Hall in about 5-10 minutes.

What happens next?  Tune into the next episode by selecting another page from the "2014 Nobel" menu, above.  These instructions cheerfully supplied as a public service for those who haven't won a Nobel Prize.

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2014 Nobel Prize Part 8: Canapes, Sir?

Night 2: The Nobel Foundation Reception – Tuesday December 9, 2014

The reception as hosted by the Nobel Foundation and the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences at the Nordiska Museet, the Swedish Museum of Cultural History.  This was a two hour long stand-up reception with champagne and some simple finger food available.  Other than a receiving line at the entry where four members of the Academy waited to welcome all attendees with a handshake there was no structure to this.  We spent some time talking to Harald Hess, who was a guest of Chemistry winner Eric Betzig and was someone who quite clearly could have been named a 4th winner but got squeezed out by the maximum limit of three winners per discipline. 

Around this time Microsoft was demoing some photo/facial recognition software that allowed you to upload a photo and it would tell you the sex and age of each person in the photo.  When I did this the results were pretty good - except that it said Weo was 20 years older than he really is....and it said the statue was a 56-year old male!

Here’s a photo of Weo signing copies of the Chemistry poster at the Nordic Museum.  I really like how this shows Weo surrounded by young people.  It captures the fact that – despite being a total gearhead – Weo is first and foremost a teacher.  (On the other hand, I’ve seen him play Pictionary at New Year’s.  He’s brilliant, but there’s a limit to his brilliance.)  Throughout this whole event people would come up to the various Laureates and, essentially, want to bask in the reflected glory.  Handshake, autograph, photo – didn’t matter, as long as they got something.

Sharon and Weo’s time was heavily scheduled.  Following tonight’s reception they were theoretically scheduled to attend a dinner hosted by the Royal Academy of Science – but they instead decided that this night was their only opportunity to enjoy dinner with their guests.  As such, they had very graciously scheduled a dinner for 20 people at a restaurant just a very short walk from the museum – looking at Google Maps 5 year later, I think it was at Wardshuset Ulla Winbladh – but not positive.  We all ended up leaving the reception at 730P (rather than at the 8P official ending) and headed over to eat.  We were given a small room perfectly sized to hold our two 10-person tables, and had a lovely meal among friends and family.  For me, personally, this meal was the highlight of the trip.  Things like the concert, awards, and banquet are fun and exciting because of their novelty, but the chance to enjoy a quiet night with friends and family trumps all.

Dinner was delicious, although at the time of this writing (5 years after the even) none of us can recall the full menu details.  We do remember that the main dish was Arctic Char served with the most AMAZING hollandaise I’ve ever had.  It had an almost foamy CRUNCH to it that was incredible.  A neighboring restaurant serves a hollandaise that has trout roe in it, so perhaps what we were served had some similar secret add-in?

When we finished dinner the sidewalks had turned a bit icy so the original plan to walk back to the hotel (about 20 minutes away) was abandoned and we instead ordered up several cabs for the quick trip back.

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2014 Nobel Prize Part 7: You Say "Disaster", I Say "Opportunity"

Day 2: The Vasa Museum – Tuesday December 9, 2014

This is a “free day” for those of us in the entourage.  We have an official event tonight, but the daytime is open for us to be tourists, so that’s what we do.  Following the normal exquisite buffet breakfast, we are going to spend the late morning and early afternoon at The Vasa Museum.

No, we're not cold.  Not at all.  It was about 10 degrees F and we Californians aren't quite used to that.  The hats were all courtesy of Eileen's sister, who knitted them all as presents!

The Vasa Museum showcases….wait for it….the Vasa.  The Vasa was a warship built in 1628 by the Swedes, and it was intended to be THE expression of national power at a time when the Swedish Navy was pre-eminent in Northern Europe.  Yes, really.  They had a navy, and it kicked ass during most of the 17th century.

The Vasa had it all: specially-cast bronze cannons that made it one of the most heavily-armed ships in the world, ornate scrollwork and decorations designed to awe the world with Sweden’s glory, and full backing of the King.  Actually, it had the full meddling of the King, who kept ordering alterations (mostly to the armaments) that robbed the ship of something really important: stability.

The result?

On the day the ship was launched and as it was making the short 1400 yard trip from the drydock to the wet dock it turned over and sank.  Yep, couldn’t even make it a mile before it went down.  And YOU worry about getting that first scratch in the days and weeks after you get a new car?

The investigations that followed have a remarkably modern slant to them.  It was painfully obvious to everyone that the changes demanded by the king were objected to by the architect (who had the good sense to die almost immediately after the sinking) – so the architect couldn’t be blamed.  It also sounds like the Fleet Admiral raised warnings – but was too cowed by the Royal Presence that he failed to flat out refuse to let the ship sail.  So the Fleet Admiral couldn’t be blamed.  And, of course, NO ONE was going to blame the king.  So, in the end, no one was held accountable for this HUGE NATIONAL DISASTER  AND EMBARRASSMENT.

Fast forward 400 years, and someone discovers the dead ship in the bottom of the harbor, where it has been buried in so much silt that little to no oxygen is available.  What this means is that almost nothing has actually decayed.  In fact, over 90% of the original ship (along with the remains of the 15 people who died) are still in almost-mint condition.  In an unprecedented archaeological feat, the ship is salvaged and reassembled, and a special climate controlled building is built to house it: The Vasa Museum.

So that’s the background to our visit to the museum, which was about a 1 mile walk from our hotel on a brisk, cold morning.  The museum was an incredible experience!  The displays of recovered items are really well laid out and signposted, and there’s also a lot of material about the recovery and preservation processes that is really interesting.  The reassembled ship, of course, dominates the museum, and visitors can walk around the outside of it on multiple levels of the surrounding building.  From a tourist point of view this is definitely a Must See attraction for anyone visiting Stockholm.

Freezing outside, but tremendously climate-controlled inside.  The Vasa is one of the (and might be THE) largest preserved item in the world, and the building is filled with incredible technology to ensure that the absolute perfect conditions prevail.

Amusingly enough, while the museum doesn’t cover up the history of how the Vasa was built and ultimately sunk, they certainly don’t follow the “this was a national embarrassment” thread of the narrative.  Instead, the emphasis is on “aren’t we lucky that the Vasa was fortunate enough to sink in such a way as to preserve it for future generations?”

Even here, as tourists, there’s still a Nobel angle.  Back on the day that we checked into our hotel, one of the things we’d each received at the Nobel Desk along with everything else was a laminated “Key of Honour” card which provided us with free admission to a bunch of local museums and other attractions.  So we simply flashed our cards at the ticket desk and were given free admission to see the Vasa.

Our magic card, giving us free entry to about 30 different places during the period of the 2014 events (December 5-13).  Another item in our goodie bag, courtesy of the Nobel Committee.

Post-Vasa we made the chilly walk back to the hotel and then headed over to the Kungstradgarden (which actually has a lot of dots over various letters, but I’m too lazy to find out how to insert them).  This is a 3-4 block long park area just bordering the opera house.  We spent a few minutes watching families skating at the outdoor ice rink before going into Burger Bar Café (at the far end of the park) for lunch.  This was a funky, cozy little space and gave our young boys food that we knew would mesh with their palettes.

 From there we meandered back to the hotel (only about 2/10ths of a mile away, so easy) and relaxed a bit before getting dressed for our next “official” event.

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2014 Nobel Prize Part 6: That Ain't Muzak

Night 1: The Nobel Concert – Monday December 8, 2014

The concert afternoon began under threatening skies, which was an improvement over the earlier morning rain. As had been the case all week, six luxury buses were staged outside the Grand Hotel Stockholm to ferry guests to the destination. As each bus would fill up it would depart, to be replaced by the next bus in line. I think that they generally had all buses underway within 15 minutes. Everyone embarked in formal clothing (suits and ties for the men, dresses for the women), bundled up in jackets, overcoats, hats, gloves, etc.

The trip to the concert hall was very quick – under 10 minutes – and got us there about 60 minutes prior to the 7PM start time. It’s possible that there was a police escort, or we might have been waved through stop lights, but I’m not certain. Drop off was just outside the main concert hall steps, so we all ran up the steps and went right in, where our invitations (which included out seating assignments) and ID were quickly checked, then everyone left coats, scarves, and other outerwear at one of the cloakrooms. Many women – I assume locals – arrived in warm boots and changed into their nice shoes outside the cloakrooms, so there were a lot of women doing quick changes on benches just outside each cloakroom.

The Stockholm Concert Hall

All these cloakrooms surrounded the central lobby/hall of the concert hall, so there was lots of room to mill around for the 10-15 minutes we waited until the doors to the auditorium opened. We passed time talking with Daniel and Stef – Stef realized that she didn’t have appropriate shoes with her, so she’d been out shopping earlier that day at the really ritzy mall area (same neighborhood as the Concert Hall) and picked up some (very) reasonably priced boots.

Once the inside doors opened we trooped up the stairs to find “Door 16”. The concert hall has 4 levels – the Orchestra/floor, two similarly sized balconies ringing three sides of the main floor, and a fourth balcony with seating that frankly looked more like hockey press boxes than theater seating. We were directed up to the second of the two balconies and, as one usher looked at our assignment in order to direct us upward he commented “oh – those are good seats”. I figured that there probably wasn’t a bad seat in the house and made a comment to that effect.  He probably says that to everyone, I thought.

Well, it turns out they WERE good seats. Really good. Doors 16 through 18 led to the 3 sections at the back of the auditorium, directly facing the stage. Door 17 led to the most central section, which turned out to be the royal seats – unoccupied for the moment. So we sat in the section immediately to the right of the King and his party. The six seats of the front row of our section were occupied by 3 of the 11 Laureates (Weo, another Chem winner, and one of the Physics winners) and their spouses. I assume three more pairs were on the other side, and I’m guessing the other Laureates and families were in corresponding locations in the first balconies just below us. Immediately behind Sharon and Weo, in 3 rows of pairs, were Daniel and Stef, Eileen and Andrew, then Robert and me. I assume the pairs behind the others were also part of each Laureates families. Jeff and Lise were one section over to our right, along with other members of Weo’s party.

The orchestra meandered on to the stage until they were finally all seated, and the concertmaster coordinated the night’s first piece, Music to Tune By, before sitting down to a generally quiet concert hall. Through some unknown piece of stage management the percussionist started beating out a snare drum tattoo and everyone rose and turned to face the back of the hall – meaning everyone was looking up at the empty seats immediately next to us. At that point the King and Queen entered from Door 17, followed by others including the Crown Princess and husband and others who we couldn’t ID. I think their party totaled 16 people – perhaps 20. The orchestra then struck up some kind of anthem. They have both a National Anthem and some kind of “God Save the King” equivalent – not sure which one this was. At the end, the King sits which is the signal to the rest of us that we can do the same.

Cover from the concert program

The concert schedule.  The three performance were judged (in order) as "Meh", "Kill me now!", and "Wow - outstanding!"

The vocal soloist and guest conductor now entered. She is going to sing “The Letter Aria” from Eugene Onegin. As it happens, they are married to one another. The conductor’s bio suggests that he’s one of the hottest of the young breed – he might be the Boston Symphony’s new guy…don’t recall. Whatever he is, he’s from the school of expressive body movements and stick shaking that I don’t personally understand. Her aria was frankly unimpressive. I expected an opera soloist to be able to be heard above the orchestra, but her vocal power is frankly not what you’d expect.

That number over, she and conductor retreated and the orchestra did a very quick re-tune. The conductor re-entered with the trumpet soloist who was performing a modern piece. The only reason to learn the name of the piece would be in order to avoid ever hearing it again. I can’t be bothered, so I’ll simply call it Music to Crash Cars To. We are treated to a virtuoso trumpet performance of an otherwise awful piece of music.

At the end, the soloist and conductor beat a retreat, leaving the orchestra onstage. Again, through some national understanding of “how it works” that was mysterious to us, everyone turned to the back of the hall and stood up at once. After a few seconds pause, the royal party, led by K&Q, got up and exited their section. At that point, all the doors opened up and people began to file out – expect those of us using doors 16 and 18. We had to wait about 90 seconds before our doors opened, no doubt to allow time for the royal party to vacate the hallway and go somewhere private. Once our doors opened we exited into the hallway where tables bearing champagne were waiting for us. Sharon and Weo tried to cut around the corner to Door 15 to greet the rest of the party, but were not allowed to do so. Security didn’t want people “leaking” into or out of our area. So we all merrily sipped our champagne and swapped gossip for 20-25 minutes before re-entering and finding our seats again.

I don’t recall what preceded the second entry by the royals – I don’t think it was another drum tattoo. I think it may have simply been that the orchestra stood up as a signal to the rest of us. We finally all took our seats and the conductor came out. He said a few quick words along the lines of “honored to be part of this…music is important…etc.”, and then they launched into Beethoven’s Seventh Symphony, which was just excellent. Weo was particularly amazed – he’s able to compare with other performances he’s attended and mentioned that the interpretation we’d just heard included things he’d never heard before and it was without question the best rendition he’d ever experienced. High praise indeed.

So on that we all finally exited (with another round of “You first” for the royal party) and retrieved our things before re-embarking on the buses back to the hotel. If we’d been smart we would have skipped the buses and gone to find a restaurant by the concert hall. The choices closer to the hotel – already meager – were essentially non-existent by 10P on Monday night. We tried walking to an Italian restaurant with Daniel and Stef that claimed to be open until midnight, but that turned out to be for drinks only. Meal service had ended by the time we arrived. So our night ended with a late room service dinner and bed.

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2014 Nobel Prize Part 5: This Might Be On the Test

Day 1: The Nobel Lectures – Monday December 8, 2014

Waking up, I first took a look outside the window.

Toto, I don't think we're in Kansas anymore!

This was shot around 9:30A.  The camera is making things look brighter than they actually were.  It wasn’t “dark” at 9:30A, but neither was it “bright”.  At this time of year, “daylight” occurred between about 9:30AM and 2:30PM.  It was definitely still dark around 8:30A, and it felt like night by about 3PM.

From there, we made our way down to the breakfast buffet.  Sadly, I never took pictures, but let me tell you: this ain’t your typical Holiday Inn/Best Western/Hilton Garden/Marriot Courtyard breakfast buffet.  No strange waffle machines, no steamer tray of powdered eggs, and no OJ or milk machines.  Nope, instead there were silver trays of meats, fishes, smoked meats and fishes, cheeses, fruits (including, of course, lingonberries), and other delicacies.  There were several loaves of different kinds of fresh-baked breads that you could hack hunks off of, along with fresh-baked muffins, scones, biscuits, and other starches.  There were crepes and pancakes.  There were made-to-order eggs.  There were various hot and cold cereal choices.  There were pitchers filled with fresh squeezed juices of various types, different milk coices, and several kinds of teas and coffees to pour.  I’m probably forgetting a bunch of stuff, but it was, you know, just your run-of-the-mill five-star hotel sort of buffet.  It was the best start to a morning you could ask for, and we got it every day!

The winners of the Nobel Prizes are officially required to present a public lecture in Sweden within 1 year of receiving the award.  In more modern times this lecture has long been scheduled as part of Nobel Week and that’s what’s happening this year.  The Physics, Chemistry, and Economics winners are all scheduled to present at Aula Magna, a lecture hall at Stockholm University.

Based on the info we had from the Nobel Desk, we knew that we could easily attend only those lectures that we wanted to.  In other words, buses were available to take us to and return us from the Chemistry lectures.  We certainly could have attended the Physics lecture (held earlier in the morning than Chemistry) or Economics (held after Chemistry) had we wished to.

Once inside Aula Magna we took our seats in a section reserved for guests of the winners and the head of the selection committee made a few quick introductory remarks.  He then introduced the first Chemistry Laureate (Heil) and ceded the stage to him.  Each Laureate had 30 minutes and it appears that this lecture is the most nerve-wracking event for all the winners.  Certainly in Weo’s case he had made it clear that the lecture was the milestone that he needed to get past before he felt he could really relax.  Weo followed Stefan, and Eric Betzig followed Weo.

There’s clearly an accepted format or set of conventions that defines how these lectures are structured in this day and age.  It seems that the norm these days is to try to lead the audience on a journey of what motivated you to undertake your work and use that as a way to also give credit to those that inspired you personally and/or professionally.  Along the way some actual science is discussed, but hopefully presented for the non-science professional.  Hell’s lecture was pretty tightly focused on himself and his work with almost nothing about what others may have done to inspire him.  Self-promoting would be a less kind description.  I honestly felt like I was hearing a sales presentation.  Both Weo and Eric were much better at making it clear that no scientist ever wins this award in a vacuum in which only the winner discovers things.  In other words, they were both more generous in crediting and thanking others.

By the way, Aula Magna is a STUNNINGLY gorgeous lecture hall, with tons of warm woods arranged in visually pleasing undulating waves.  It also has tremendous acoustics, which was proven by the 3 students high up in a spot-light platform on house right.  They were speaking in what they THOUGHT were low voices, but their comments (in Swedish, so unintelligible to us) were magnified all over the hall.  Audience members were continually craning their heads up and around to stare daggers at them, but they remained oblivious.  Finally, someone said “SSSSHHHHH” in Swedish (English translation: “SSSSHHHHH”) and they got the hint.

Later in the afternoon we had to walk over to a couple of different shops to have our (Doug, Robert, Andrew) final fittings for our formal wear for the Awards and Banquet.  Doug went to the same store as all the other men and my fitting was a quick affair.  We had to go to a different store for the boys.  Their fittings took a bit longer as kids are often caught between sizes and therefore it takes some time to find the right starting points for them from which tailored results will be delivered to our hotel later.  Ironically, when we finally get dressed on Wednesday we’ll discover with horror that what has been delivered to us is NOT what we had fitted for the boys – it is too small in both cases.  We’ll theorize that the two sons of Physics Laureate Nakamura, who are the same ages but smaller than as our boys, got our stuff and we got theirs.  (We’ll confirm this visually onstage Wednesday when we note that their two boys are wearing clothing much too large for them).  So the boys are sadly going to wear suits too small for them.  In Robert’s case it will be a close thing, indeed – he was not too far from ripping the seams out of his too-small shirt and coat.  (“Hulk angry at small suit!”)

The illuminated reindeer above are in a small park just across the street from the hotel and are something we passed as we walked over to the clothing stores.  To give a sense of what dark Swedish winter is like I’ll point out that this photo was taken about 3PM.

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2014 Nobel Prize Part 4: Let's Go Already!

Getting There: Sunday, December 7, 2014

We ended up flying on SAS, which is the national airline of Sweden.  This is the same airline which all the Laureates had used, and one that we could have booked via the assistance of Scanworld, the Nobel Committee’s travel partner.  Ultimately, I had ended up booking directly with SAS once I determined that Scanworld wasn’t offering any special rates to us.  

From San Francisco we flew to Arlanda International in Stockholm.  Total flight time was just over 13 hours, including the layover and plane change in Copenhagen.  I don’t recall much about our flight other than a vague memory of a dinner including some kind of dessert that included lingonberries, and a snack that featured reindeer sausage.  I believe that we were all impressed by the overall quality of the SAS experience, however.

The very first Nobel-related messaging we saw was at the airport, on our way to baggage claim.  There was signage everywhere welcoming arriving passengers to Nobel Week and also directly congratulating the Nobel Laureates.  

There was also a media campaign (which might have been Nobel Week-related, but may also simply have been the normal signage) consisting of large photos of famous Stockholm natives with the message "Welcome to MY hometown" on them.  Examples were Lasse Hallstrom ("Film Director"), Mats Sundin ("Ice Hockey Player"), and Ingrid Bergman ("Legend").  Yes, that was the description on her panel.  I wonder what kind of questions you get asked when you go to a job interview in hopes of being hired to be a Legend?  

Although we could have taken Arlanda Express (aka the regional metro system) from the airport to the vicinity of the hotel we instead opted for a taxi in order to get door-to-door service.  After a long flight through the night we wanted to keep things as simple as possible and limit the amount of lugging of luggage we had to do.  

Of course, Nobel Prize winners are assigned a car and driver throughout their stay in Sweden – a sexy black sedan with Nobel markings on the outside.  It might have actually been a Ford Crown Victoria:  

A sleek, reliable car that has exquisite details and handles well in corners

 This car should not be confused with Crown Princess Victoria of Sweden:

A sleek, reliable princess that has exquisite details and handles well in corners

An interesting side-note about CPV:  Until 1990, she was just Princess Victoria.  However, that year Sweden’s Parliament passed a new law that allowed the crown to pass to the King’s oldest child, NOT his oldest SON (who was younger than CPV).  So at age 13 she was suddenly leap-frogged over her brother as the heir-apparent.  I’d make a joke here, but the story turns (temporarily) sad.  The sudden change in status was extremely stressful for her and she developed anorexia.  She would later say that her life was so regimented that the only thing she felt like she had control over was what she ate – or binged and purged in her case.

To get her help her parents decided to remove her from the fishbowl of Sweden and sent her off to college in the US, where she would have comparative anonymity while going to school and receiving treatment.  One positive outcome was that she met and married her….wait for it…personal trainer.  So they guy in the royal box sitting next to her in uniform is actually a former trainer and gym owner.  (Weo mentioned that, during the Nobel Banquet, the conversation he heard between CPV and her sister was typical suburban soccer mom type stuff.)  To her credit she’s been very outspoken about her struggles in hopes that others can profit from her experiences.

Outside the Grand Hotel, on the light posts, were LED display screens displaying the Nobel Medal on an ever-changing background of colors.  Since it was already pitch black outside (at around 5PM) this was a really nice effect.  Had we arrived earlier we could have attended a reception for the four American winners that was being held at the American Embassy.  I'm sure every Ambassador dreams of the opportunity to make small talk with jet-lagged tourists.

Our hotel, Grand Hotel Stockholm, is the traditional “heart” of Nobel Week.  All the Laureates are guests here, as are about 200-250 of their guests.  In the lobby of the hotel is found the “Nobel Desk” where, upon arrival, we collected our tickets for various events, received a booklet outlining Weo’s schedule (each guest got a booklet customized for “their” Laureate), got a page describing the transportation schedule of the buses that would get us to various venues, and were able to pick up copies of the Nobel posters.  Each discipline was represented with its own poster covering the winners’ achievements and reasons for winning.  The hosts at the desk were also available to help recommend places to eat and act as concierges.  It appeared to me that these folks were working 16-18 hours every day we were present.

One of the items in our goodie bag from the Nobel Desk was this program which summarized the various activities not only of Nobel Week, but the week following.

There were actually 11 different versions of the book, each one customized for a particular winner.  We, of course, received the book for "our guy".  In particular, the events for the 2nd week were generally different for each winner as the book reflected the different schools and other places they would each visit.   

After collecting our various “goodies” we went upstairs to our connecting rooms and unpacked.  As might be expected from a luxury hotel, the rooms were…luxurious.  Lots of warm wood tones abound.  

There was a fruit plate waiting for us, but by the time we’d gotten into our room it was very late in the afternoon and we were tired, so we simply called Sharon and Weo to tell them we’d arrived and then ordered up room service dinner. Andrew had the Swedish meatballs because, come on…somebody had to!  Finally, exhausted, we turned in for the night.

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