ABSTRACT
In autumn 1989, my colleague Willi Simon and I were joking around and he bet me 500 francs that I would win the Nobel Prize that year. I was sure I wouldn’t, and of course went on to win the bet. I was happy to receive my winnings and spent them on an expensive book about Tibetan medicine, which fed my second passion besides physical chemistry: Tibetan art and philosophy. Sadly Willi Simon died shortly afterwards, meaning he never got to see that his prediction came true, just two years later.
