March 12: snow in Belgium

I had to wake up at 5 o'clock in the morning to catch my flight to Helsinki. It snowed about 10cm in Belgium, which is extremely rare for March. On March, 6 the maximum temperature was 19,5°C. The day before it started freezing again. The last time this happened in the second half of March was in 1925!
It was a tense morning. First I had to reach the airport. Fortunately the train was right on time! At the airport I was not so lucky: my flight was delayed by 45 minutes. On the other hand: it is also exciting to see that your plane is being deiced while you are already inside...

The distance Brussels-Helsinki is about 1600 km.
The Finnair flight does this distance in 2h30m.

In the afternoon I was invited by Cyril to visit the Finnish Meteorological Institute (or Ilmatieteen Laitos in Finnish). The main building is located in Helsinki, but they have four other premises. In total 680 people work at this institute, in research areas as Climate Change, Air Quality, Artic Research, ... Cyril works in the space research group. He investigates aurora, not only at Earth, but also at other planets in our solar system. A very interesting topic!

The weather radar at the FMI.

Afterwards I visited the Academic Bookstore (Akateeminen Kirjakauppa) at the Pohjoisesplanadi. This store is built by the famous Finnish architect Alver Aalto. It is probably the biggest bookstore in Scandinavia and the most cozy one for sure (with a nice bar at the top floor)! A must for book-lovers all over the world.

In the evening the first meeting with the other social media followers was planned in restaurant Zetor. A stricking fact is that the menu indicates which dishes have low lactose and are gluten-free. It seems that a lot of Finnish people have congenital lactase deficiency. That is a genetic disorder that makes it impossible to digest milk products. I ate the grilled salmon, and I can really recommend it!
After my lunch, I read in an online newspaper that there was that morning about 1600 km of traffic jams in Belgium. This is as much as the distance Brussels-Helsinki! Very impressive if you know that the largest distance between to borders is less than 300 km.