Packing up now to go home.
But to continue the travelogue, the last post only got up to Sunday afternoon. In fact, the whole week was still ahead!
Sunday dinner was at a restaurant on Gamla Stan called Martin Trotzig. The limo drove us out there, and the driver helped us find the restaurant, just a few steps away from where the car parked. We found out later that during those couple of minutes, someone stole the "Nobel Prize" livery that was magnetically stuck to the limo for the week. Dinner wasn't bad, but not the best of the week, but I did learn how to pronounce the word for "cloudberry", which is spelled as "hjortron" and pronounced "your-tron" accent on the 2nd syllable. While we're at it, the other words learned during the stay were very simple: hej (pronounced "hey") for hello, and "hej do" (pronounced "hey door") for goodbye, and "tack" (prounounced with more of a short "ar" sound to the "a") for thanks.
So now, Monday, the first day of official Nobel week. The first official event is a press conference. We decided Dad would be best served by showing up at the photo op following the interview session. Mum accompanied him for that. Us hangers-on had no scheduled activities until the evening. Slept in, and then went to the hotel restaurant's smorgasbord. That had various varieties of swedish fare, including the oft-mentioned herring. I found that I liked it quite a lot, and in particular, the pickled herring. Maybe not every day, but it was pretty good. We were pretty stuffed after that.
In the afternoon, we went back to the Nobel Museum, but it was closed for the day, so we just wandered around Gamla Stan, looking in the shops on the main street. Then we had to head back for the 1st of many receptions. This one was held at the Swedish Academy of Sciences, hosted by Prof Osquist, who'd met us at the airport. Lots of people, including a group of high school students from Malaysia, who won some sort of science competition whose prize was a visit to Stockholm during Nobel week and attendence at this reception. Dad signed some stuff for them and took pictures with them. We met Andrew Mitchell, the UK ambassador, with whom we would be having lunch on Wed at the UK Embassy. He's a very nice guy. We also met the Boyle family, who were very friendly. We would, of course, meet a number of times during the week. After the reception, we were still pretty full from the big lunch, and the nibbles at the reception, but after a rest, we decided to go out. We went to "Il Conte", an italian place in Osterdam. Osterdam is the upscale residential part of town, but this restaurant was not hugely expensive, and informal, and pretty good.
Now it was Tuesday. The weather so far had been heavy overcast with occasional drizzle. Coupled with dawn at 8am and dusk at 3pm, it was not a long day, light-wise. The main activity for Tuesday was the Nobel lecture. We were up early and driven to Stockholm University. Mum was a bit nervous, but not too much, and she delivered a fantastic lecture. Everyone complimented her afterwards, and into the days following. She certainly got the most appreciative and sustained applause out of the three physics speeches. Dad and Mum got a lunch after the lecture; we took the bus back to the hotel. We wanted to do a little more during the daylight, despite being kind of tired, and we took a walk to the Moderna Museet, on the next little island over. We had a quick lunch at their cafeteria, which boasts "one of the best views of Stockholm" -- the caf does have an expansive glass wall overlooking the city, and we managed to grab a table right by the window. Meal was standard museum fare; not bad.
The main featured exhibit was on Salvador Dali. The first room was exhibited in standard museum style, with his paintings hung accompanied by description and analysis. The next room showcased Dali's irreverent nature as his fame become more about him than his art. The rest of the museum was pretty interesting too, but the main feature overshadowed the permanent collection. The other half of the building housed the architecture museum, which featured models of various iconic architecture in Sweden.
We were a bit late getting back to the hotel (dark by this time), and needed to get ready for the Nobel Concert. We ended up getting swedish meatballs via room service (3rd meatballs of the trip). The concert itself was fantastic. We were seated in the area adjouning the royal box. Not really a box, per se, but a separated seating area on the main balcony facing the orchestra. The royals have real seats, and for that night, the Crown Princess, Victoria, was to attend, and she had an even more special seat. We all stood when they arrived, and the concert started. The concert program featured Martha Argerich, playing Ravel's Piano Concerto in G Major. The 2nd movement in particular, an adagio movement, was sublime. After sustained applause, she did a short solo piece as an encore. The orchestra played a piece before Argerich, and after the intermission, played Prokofiev's Romeo and Juliet suite. The audience wanted another encore, but the conductor was having nothing of it, coming out merely to bow several times and credit various soloists, but he obviously didn't plan for any extra playing time and didn't want to. In fact, during the applause for Argerich, she wanted the conductor to join her in a bow, but here too, he adamantly refused, going so far as pretending to agree and then letting her bow again by herself. She seemed a little exasperated with him.
Wednesday was a little interlude between the lecture and the award ceremony. Dad and mum did a little interview for the web, for nobelweb.com. Meanwhile, we just had a late breakfast and then got ready for lunch with the UK ambassador. Most of the 2009 laureates were US, including dad, but mum decided that we could pay a visit to the UK embassy since dad's research was done in the UK. So off we went. The UK embassy is housed in a building that was built specifically as the embassy in the early 1900s. The story goes, according to Ambassador Mitchell, that in the early days, the English ambassador to Sweden had to host the Swedish king in an apartment on top of a store. They were suitably embarassed, and money was immediately cleared for use to construct a proper embassy. It's of course been renovated and modernized, but retains the official aura of those days. After some further chatting with the ambassador and guests, we had a lunch. The ambassador told us that he knew we were probably having a lot of heavy meals, so he had asked his chef to prepare something lighter. The first course, a cream of watercress soup, was particularly nice.
After lunch, we had a short rest at the hotel before another reception, this time at the Nordic Museum, a spectacular building that looks cathedral-like inside, due to its construction technique. This reception was even bigger, and we ran into another young peoples' science contest winner group. This time, it was some sort of international competition. By this time, we had seen other VIPs from the other receptions, that we'd talked to momentarily, so we could nod our heads and smile at various people. Of course, others who we had not met came up to introduce themselves to dad, and even just to us, since we were related to the laureate.
Following this reception, we were immediately off to a dinner hosted by the Minister of Science and Technology from Taiwan. We indirectly knew him through the guy who runs the Silicon Valley outpost of the Ministry. They have offices throughout the world to enable technical liason between Taiwan and other countries, and the Silicon Valley guy found out that his Minister was going to be in Stockholm during Nobel week and wanted to invite us to dinner. I liasoned with his Brussels counterpart and we scheduled the dinner for Wed night. It was held at a chinese restaurant just outside of Soderholm, in Nacka. It was pretty good, and nice to have rice after two weeks of western food.
But to continue the travelogue, the last post only got up to Sunday afternoon. In fact, the whole week was still ahead!
Sunday dinner was at a restaurant on Gamla Stan called Martin Trotzig. The limo drove us out there, and the driver helped us find the restaurant, just a few steps away from where the car parked. We found out later that during those couple of minutes, someone stole the "Nobel Prize" livery that was magnetically stuck to the limo for the week. Dinner wasn't bad, but not the best of the week, but I did learn how to pronounce the word for "cloudberry", which is spelled as "hjortron" and pronounced "your-tron" accent on the 2nd syllable. While we're at it, the other words learned during the stay were very simple: hej (pronounced "hey") for hello, and "hej do" (pronounced "hey door") for goodbye, and "tack" (prounounced with more of a short "ar" sound to the "a") for thanks.
So now, Monday, the first day of official Nobel week. The first official event is a press conference. We decided Dad would be best served by showing up at the photo op following the interview session. Mum accompanied him for that. Us hangers-on had no scheduled activities until the evening. Slept in, and then went to the hotel restaurant's smorgasbord. That had various varieties of swedish fare, including the oft-mentioned herring. I found that I liked it quite a lot, and in particular, the pickled herring. Maybe not every day, but it was pretty good. We were pretty stuffed after that.
In the afternoon, we went back to the Nobel Museum, but it was closed for the day, so we just wandered around Gamla Stan, looking in the shops on the main street. Then we had to head back for the 1st of many receptions. This one was held at the Swedish Academy of Sciences, hosted by Prof Osquist, who'd met us at the airport. Lots of people, including a group of high school students from Malaysia, who won some sort of science competition whose prize was a visit to Stockholm during Nobel week and attendence at this reception. Dad signed some stuff for them and took pictures with them. We met Andrew Mitchell, the UK ambassador, with whom we would be having lunch on Wed at the UK Embassy. He's a very nice guy. We also met the Boyle family, who were very friendly. We would, of course, meet a number of times during the week. After the reception, we were still pretty full from the big lunch, and the nibbles at the reception, but after a rest, we decided to go out. We went to "Il Conte", an italian place in Osterdam. Osterdam is the upscale residential part of town, but this restaurant was not hugely expensive, and informal, and pretty good.
Now it was Tuesday. The weather so far had been heavy overcast with occasional drizzle. Coupled with dawn at 8am and dusk at 3pm, it was not a long day, light-wise. The main activity for Tuesday was the Nobel lecture. We were up early and driven to Stockholm University. Mum was a bit nervous, but not too much, and she delivered a fantastic lecture. Everyone complimented her afterwards, and into the days following. She certainly got the most appreciative and sustained applause out of the three physics speeches. Dad and Mum got a lunch after the lecture; we took the bus back to the hotel. We wanted to do a little more during the daylight, despite being kind of tired, and we took a walk to the Moderna Museet, on the next little island over. We had a quick lunch at their cafeteria, which boasts "one of the best views of Stockholm" -- the caf does have an expansive glass wall overlooking the city, and we managed to grab a table right by the window. Meal was standard museum fare; not bad.
The main featured exhibit was on Salvador Dali. The first room was exhibited in standard museum style, with his paintings hung accompanied by description and analysis. The next room showcased Dali's irreverent nature as his fame become more about him than his art. The rest of the museum was pretty interesting too, but the main feature overshadowed the permanent collection. The other half of the building housed the architecture museum, which featured models of various iconic architecture in Sweden.
We were a bit late getting back to the hotel (dark by this time), and needed to get ready for the Nobel Concert. We ended up getting swedish meatballs via room service (3rd meatballs of the trip). The concert itself was fantastic. We were seated in the area adjouning the royal box. Not really a box, per se, but a separated seating area on the main balcony facing the orchestra. The royals have real seats, and for that night, the Crown Princess, Victoria, was to attend, and she had an even more special seat. We all stood when they arrived, and the concert started. The concert program featured Martha Argerich, playing Ravel's Piano Concerto in G Major. The 2nd movement in particular, an adagio movement, was sublime. After sustained applause, she did a short solo piece as an encore. The orchestra played a piece before Argerich, and after the intermission, played Prokofiev's Romeo and Juliet suite. The audience wanted another encore, but the conductor was having nothing of it, coming out merely to bow several times and credit various soloists, but he obviously didn't plan for any extra playing time and didn't want to. In fact, during the applause for Argerich, she wanted the conductor to join her in a bow, but here too, he adamantly refused, going so far as pretending to agree and then letting her bow again by herself. She seemed a little exasperated with him.
Wednesday was a little interlude between the lecture and the award ceremony. Dad and mum did a little interview for the web, for nobelweb.com. Meanwhile, we just had a late breakfast and then got ready for lunch with the UK ambassador. Most of the 2009 laureates were US, including dad, but mum decided that we could pay a visit to the UK embassy since dad's research was done in the UK. So off we went. The UK embassy is housed in a building that was built specifically as the embassy in the early 1900s. The story goes, according to Ambassador Mitchell, that in the early days, the English ambassador to Sweden had to host the Swedish king in an apartment on top of a store. They were suitably embarassed, and money was immediately cleared for use to construct a proper embassy. It's of course been renovated and modernized, but retains the official aura of those days. After some further chatting with the ambassador and guests, we had a lunch. The ambassador told us that he knew we were probably having a lot of heavy meals, so he had asked his chef to prepare something lighter. The first course, a cream of watercress soup, was particularly nice.
After lunch, we had a short rest at the hotel before another reception, this time at the Nordic Museum, a spectacular building that looks cathedral-like inside, due to its construction technique. This reception was even bigger, and we ran into another young peoples' science contest winner group. This time, it was some sort of international competition. By this time, we had seen other VIPs from the other receptions, that we'd talked to momentarily, so we could nod our heads and smile at various people. Of course, others who we had not met came up to introduce themselves to dad, and even just to us, since we were related to the laureate.
Following this reception, we were immediately off to a dinner hosted by the Minister of Science and Technology from Taiwan. We indirectly knew him through the guy who runs the Silicon Valley outpost of the Ministry. They have offices throughout the world to enable technical liason between Taiwan and other countries, and the Silicon Valley guy found out that his Minister was going to be in Stockholm during Nobel week and wanted to invite us to dinner. I liasoned with his Brussels counterpart and we scheduled the dinner for Wed night. It was held at a chinese restaurant just outside of Soderholm, in Nacka. It was pretty good, and nice to have rice after two weeks of western food.
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