Smart home Stockholm
SWEDEN | Host city of Nobel Prize celebrates nobility of human achievement year-round
STOCKHOLM, Sweden -- This dynamic Scandinavian capital is always exciting but never more so than today, when the annual Nobel Prizes are awarded on the 112th anniversary of Swedish chemist Alfred Nobel's death.
Since 1901, some of the brightest minds in physics, chemistry, medicine, literature and, several decades later, economics, have gathered in this city on Dec. 10 to collect their lucrative kudos from the king of Sweden and celebrate like royalty at a lavish banquet and party. There's a YouTube video I want to see: a bunch of Nobel laureates getting jiggy on the dance floor.
GRAND HOTEL: This historic property on Stockholm's harbor hosts Nobel laureates and their families. If the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences overlooked your scholarly contributions yet again, you can at least book the hotel's Nobel Stay package, good through the end of the year. Starting at $1,200 for two people, the package includes two nights at the hotel, smorgasbord breakfast, private tour of City Hall, entrance to the Nobel Museum, limo transportation and lunch at the famed Swedish tavern Den Gyldene Freden; www.grandhotel.se.
TOURIST INFO: www.visitsweden.com.
University of Chicago emeritus physics Professor Yoichiro Nambu is among this year's winners. He won for describing spontaneous broken symmetry in subatomic physics.
Unlike Nambu, who reportedly has been on the Nobel short list for the last 30 years, I never had reason to give the prestigious prizes much thought -- until this summer, when I visited Stockholm.
The city and the awards are inextricably linked. Stockholm's second most popular tourist attraction is the regal, red brick City Hall, where the Nobel banquet takes place.
For the record, the No. 1 tourist site is the Vasa Museum, housing an ornate 17th century war ship that sunk on its maiden voyage. It spent 333 years at the bottom of the Baltic Sea before being rescued and meticulously reconstructed. Whoever designed this egregiously top-heavy vessel certainly does not deserve a Nobel Prize.
At City Hall, guides lead daily tours in Swedish and English. You get to see where 1,300 people sit down each year for a Nobel feast in the Blue Hall, which isn't blue at all. Turns out the red bricks in this 1923 building proved too pretty to paint blue. And apparently someone proved too stubborn to change the hall's name.
The more appropriately titled Golden Hall, where the post-dinner party takes place, is blanketed with nearly 19 million mosaic tiles. City Hall's 348-foot tall tower provides panoramic views of this city of 14 islands linked by 57 bridges.
For a taste of what it's like to be a Nobel laureate, you can head to City Hall's restaurant, Stadshuskallaren, and enjoy the same kind of food served at Nobel banquets dating back to 1901. Even the wines and the china are as authentic as possible.
"You also get a gold medal -- made of chocolate," said my Stockholm guide, Margareta Andersson.
You can learn more about the 809 brainiacs who've won the real medals at the Nobel Museum in Stockholm's medieval Old Town, or Gamla Stan. Put on a pair of headphones and listen to interviews and acceptance speeches from previous winners, such as the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr., Ernest Hemingway and Toni Morrison.
The museum also delves into the life of Alfred Nobel and the eponymous award he outlined in his will. When this inventor of dynamite died in 1896, he'd amassed more than 350 patents -- and a sizable fortune he used to endow the awards.
Each award carries about $1.3 million in prize money. Same goes for the Nobel Peace Award, which is being given today in Oslo, Norway. (Nobel's will stipulated that the peace prize be awarded in Norway, which was loosely unified with Sweden while he was alive.)
During the week of festivities culminating with tonight's banquet, Nobel winners and their families stay in the regal Grand Hotel Stockholm, where the award banquets were once held.
The 374-room hotel -- which includes a Nobel suite -- was an instant landmark when it opened in 1874. The hotel's elegant Veranda restaurant has fantastic views of the harbor, Old Town and Royal Palace, and it's the only place in town that serves traditional smorgasbord year-round.
Acclaimed Swedish chef Mathias Dahlgren opened his restaurant in the Grand Hotel last year. Within nine months, it had a Michelin star. Dahlgren's eatery is more like two restaurants: the casual Food Bar (Matbaren) and the upscale Matsalen, where I had what can be described as the best meal of my life. It started with a little ball of bread sitting humbly on a plank of wood, covered by a glass dome.
"This is Mathias' first food memory of warm bread and butter from where he grew up in north Sweden," the waitress said in perfect English, lifting the glass dome to set free an intoxicating scent of pine and fresh bread.
The little butter bomb exploded in my mouth. The dishes kept on coming: pickled cucumber soup, salted mackerel, whipped bacon fat -- all of which tastes so much better than it sounds.
"I've had offers to be on TV and do shows, but I don't want that," said Dahlgren, 39, when he dropped by my table. "I'm happy here, in the kitchen."
I'm happy he's there, too. And if there were a Nobel Prize for food, I know who I'd vote for.