Sweden - Day Three - May 2, 2024

 We slept great and were so thankful to have our luggage.  Hunter Douglas has a big buffet breakfast available for us every morning.  A few years ago when we went to Munich, Germany, there were pretzels at every meal.  Here in Sweden, there are cinnamon rolls at every meal.  

This morning we had a Hunter Douglas meeting.  I'm really enjoying this trip as there are far less people than there were in Malta and Maui.  It's made it easier to talk to some of the Hunter Douglas staff that are here.  I thought they did a fantastic job with their meeting and talking about the future.  I took notes and wrote down ideas for marketing and expansion.

After the meeting we went to a restaurant that was part of the hotel and sat outside to eat.  Last week, the weather was cold and wet and this week it has been in the 60's and 70's and sunny.  It's absolutely beautiful.  I got what the menu called a "French lunch" which was noodles with pesto and veggies.  I also enjoyed a raspberry soda.  

We had heard so much about the Nobel prize that we decided to walk to the Nobel Prize Museum.  I took this photo of our hotel on our walk.

The Nobel Prize museum was very interesting.  We found out that each guest is invited to bring an item that can be put on display.  One winner brought a slide rule (see photo); and another guest brought a jar of peanut butter.  I didn't get a photo of that, but she literally said snacking on the peanut butter was one of her favorite things to do while working.  They can bring any item whatsoever; so it was fun to see how different they all think.

Every year in December the winners come to Stockholm.  They stay at the Grand Hotel (where we are staying).  Their dinner is now at City Hall and it will often go for four hours.  We were told that it is televised and it is a big deal for the Swedish people.  Many people will host "watch" parties and even dress up top dress while they watch.  I was trying to see if there was anything similar that we do in the States and all I could think of was Reality TV Watch shows (like Survivor or American Idol).  So very very different than watching a four hour presentation of the Nobel Prize winners.

In the museum they had signs for each winner and they slowly went around a track on the ceiling and it told you about each winner on the sign. They also had a listening tour you could do by scanning a QR code and it would open on your phone.  It was very informative.

That evening we went to a lounge in our hotel and had a light dinner.  We noticed an alcoholic drink being served inside of a bird cage.  Our waiter told us that the original owner of the hotel had a bird and he kept it in a grand cage in the lobby of the hotel.  But eventually it was too much of a nuisance to the guests, so he had to take it out of the lobby.  So he trained it to carry messages instead.  Legend???

Off to bed for a good night's sleep.