The 3D lab

I like airplane food. It comes at random moments of the night, you only have half the space you need to fit all the tiny boxes on your table and you don’t get anything if you use your nighttime for sleeping and can’t hear the trolley.

I got chicken tandoori in a small box with couscous and it tasted amazing. I don’t know which magic tricks they use, but I’ll never manage to make such a tasteful chicken-tandoori. It might be because I don’t add enough flavouring additives… . The chicken  was accompanied by a salad with pasta and olives  (even more tasteful, can you imagine? And I don’t even like olives), bread with butter and cheese ( flying with AirFrance for a reason), a tangerine (a bit dry) and a heavy chocolate mousse that could serve as dinner all by itself. Plus: free drinks and an additional bottle of water. Crossing the Atlantic could have been worse.

And there is more! It might be only on AirFrance flights, or I never explored my previous airplanes thoroughly but I  discovered the all-you-can-eat on the airplane today. Before you get too excited, the options are limited to crackers, some strange orange-tasting cookies and a surprisingly awesome little flask with applesauce. But those were freely accessible  the whole night.

Around 11:30 European morning or 7:30 Chilean time, we approached the Andes. Around then breakfast was announced. Again a wonderful collection of small boxes. The Highlight was the ‘oeufs brouillés florentine’ (oh so incredibly tasteful, how can eggs be so tasteful!)  combined with a nice piece of bread. A bit strange was the combination of fresh cheese and apple compote (why?) and the little box (box!?) of orange juice. The French croissant was unfortunately absent, instead we got a sandwich with jam, which wasn’t that bad after all.

Even on the short domestic flight from Santiago to Puerto Monte the food was interesting. The ‘Queque de manjar’ was an awesome sweet cake and I was allowed to choose a second snack! I wisely chose mixed fruits, which turned out to contain a well-balanced mix of pineapple and pineapple juice. From Puerto Monte to Punta Arenas, only two hours later, they gave me the same choice again. The ‘Queque de manjar’ was definitely a go, but I replaced the mixed-fruit-only-pineapple with ‘Grissines de queso’, which turned out to lack the promised taste of parmesano and oregano a little bit.

It’s a different world up in the air, that is for sure.

When autumn gives Belgium a stormy warning that winter is on its way, I escape all the bad weather and go to the southern hemisphere. There spring is working at full speed. While you all cuddle together under blankets with your feet on the heater, I’ll be merrily hopping around through fields of flowers, between little bunnies and ducklings. It sounds like a very smart idea, no?

At least, that’s what I thought at first, but my research irresistibly pulls me towards the subarctic, where autumn starts before spring even begins. I remember my traveling experience of last year, I left a Belgian heatwave to enjoy the Scandinavian summer.

This picture  taken in the middle of July clearly tells the whole tale: subarctic mountains don’t participate in the silly game called spring. Now I go to Punta Arenas, a city dreaded for its cold and biting winds…

I’ll better start packing an extra suitcase with sweaters, windstoppers and mittens. And a shiny picture of the sun.

— Some more pictures in ‘Pictures from a PhD’ —