Nobel Day, yesterday Dec 10th, began with the traditional Nobel prize Award Ceremony where the Laureates receive their Nobel medals and diplomas from King Carl and the Royal Academy.
Afterwords ,1300 guests made their way through the winter darkness to Stockholm City Hall, illuminated by torches and braziers, to take part in the Nobel banquet.
Doesn't this sound lovely ? Wouldn't you love to see how this all plays out in lovely photographs? Our own Per Svangren was totally committed to bringing you photos of the above mentioned views. There were, however,...... how do you we say, a couple of problems.
From Per............
" First, a morning walk taking some photos. No bips and bloopers there."
"Second.....The award ceremony was to begin at the Concert Hall at 4 pm so I posted myself there at 1:30 to see everyone coming,and taking photos as they were entering. Boy did I have a great position.
That was until 3 o'clock came. At this precise time the police came by to clear the area. I was moved to stand 300 meters from the Concert Hall and just when one thinks things can't get any worse, darkness fell, my flash wouldn't work, but this didn't really matter as I was so far away.
At 4:15 exactly, all of the cars came,dropped off their passengers, but as for me I was too far away to see anything and everyone was under umbrellas.
Maybe I have forgotten to mention that it was cold, it was raining and I had Diesel, my dog, with me. A major point is that Diesel didn't want to be there and kept trying to leave. The photos are complete bips and bloopers."
"Third, I went home to the dog's relief. I changed my clothes, left Diesel at home this time , and walked to the City Hall. Having wizened up from the morning I arrived 30 minutes before the banquet was to start. Just as I arrived, the police were leaving because all of the guests were already there. They had arrived from under a portico where no one could see them. There were no buses running all day so all of these endeavors I did with my own two feet. I had to walk all day."
Now on the other side of the world , in a kitchen in Tennessee, two women of Swedish and Swedish American descendant discovered that the Nobel Prize Award ceremony was being broadcast live on-line. The banquet too. :)
This was the first time that I had ever seen the Nobel Prize Awards Ceremony. I'm never in Sweden for Nobel Week, so it was just thrilling for me. It was so beautiful and the music was grand. To have a look for yourself please go to this link where you can learn more about the Nobel Prizes and such, plus they will have a video recording on-line soon of today's events. www.nobelprize.org
As we were watching the "red carpet" portion of the program we noticed it was really raining and thought of Per the entire time. The only thing to do really was to eat our Nobel Medal Chocolate from the Nobel Museum. As we all know chocolate can solve any problem. So what have we learned from this adventure? It's much better on TV !
