Friday, December 6th. Arrive Stockholm 8 am, luggage stuffed with white tie costume, dark suits, evening gowns, newly acquired white shirts and ties. Light rain. Grand Hotel selectively grand. Bathroom magnificent but closets insufficient for two Nobel guests. No bureaus whatever. After dinner find hosts and Cornell physics colleagues Dave Lee and Bob Richardson newly arrived from Göteborg, wearing tiny gold lapel pins so reporters, autograph collectors can tell laureates from guests. Bob has bad cold. Get perfect 8 hours sleep, but first night always easy.

Saturday, December 7th. Breakfast buffet at Grand phenomenal, and attended by many old friends from glory days of superfluid helium-3. Black stretch limos—one per laureate—take physics and chemistry winners to lectures. Guests follow in tour buses. Lecture hall surprisingly small. Front rows reserved for Nobel guests. Physics lectures evocative of scientific memories from early 1970s. Bliss was it in that dawn to be alive. Chemistry talks also fun since buckyballs really physics. Or is superfluid 3He really chemistry? Both prizes for something discovered accidentally while looking for something else. Back to Grand in dark. Get report on literature prize lecture by Wislawa Szymborska from those who cut chemistry to attend. Who would have expected parallel sessions? Awake half the night.

Sunday, December 8th. Laureates busy all day; guests free, weather dry, city beautiful. Collapse at 2 pm, awakening from nap in darkness at 3. Bus to opulent reception. Reunion of old 3He crowd at delicious dinner. Laureates can't make it, having mandatory “Informal dinner (dark business suit)” at Academy of Sciences. Awake most of night.

Monday, December 9th. Guest status good for front row seats at economics lecture. Theory of auctions. Integrals and derivatives. Like physics except physics works. American laureates have lunch with ambassador. Poor laureates. Guests have learned to skip lunch between breakfast buffet and late afternoon reception. Today's event dwarfs yesterday's: Apotheosis of Informal Dress. Black suit blends right in. Succumb to earthly delights until time to depart for dinner in gorgeous baroque clubroom with Swedish Cornell alumni. Sleep all night.

Tuesday, December 10th. Big day. Women have hair set in morning and are confined to quarters until afternoon. Laureates off at a mandatory rehearsal (casual). Take long walk along water to check out City Hall. Many delivery vans, mysterious stacks of wood.