Being a PhD student in physics does many things to a person. Besides obtaining a degree you really don’t care about once you actually have it, there is also a replacement process occurring in the brain, with new understanding pushing out previously established concepts. One the one hand, for example, the PhD student will gain knowledge on some essential topics, such as which instant noodles are best, how to stagger the all-nighters in order to stay sane, or how to deal with people breaking into the institute at night (story for a different time). In exchange, however, the same PhD student will, over time, forget certain generally accepted aspects of society, such as weekends, non-caffeinated drinks, or sunlight. I experienced this process about a year into my PhD, when I realized that I had lost the concept of three meals a day, instead preferring to consume four or five snacks a day (I recommend Soba instant noodles with the orange cap) at four-hour intervals. And so, it was a great shock moving to Finland, where one only really eats once a day.

Lunch at Aalto is a big deal. As a work group, we typically go to one of the local Factory or Maukas branches. It is, however, not a real choice, since all lunch places in the entire country seem to offer the same, single option: All-you-can-pile-on-one-plate lunch buffet. And since you are paying twelve euros, you will try to maximize your meal. As a result, the mid-day meal, which in Germany is over and done with in fifteen minutes, extends to a ninety-minute affair. To observe this complex process in action, let us accompany an experienced Finnish eater on their lunch break on an average Thursday in early December.

On the dot at 12:29, the Finn will get up from their desk and take off their indoor shoes to switch to winter boots. Grabbing their jacket and home-made hat and gloves from the coat rack at the entrance to the office, they begin a slow and tedious process. Since the office of our imaginary Finn is at the very end of the building, it is their duty to knock at every office and lab on the way to the front door of the building. Each person must then switch their shoes and get dressed for winter, resulting in ten minutes having passed by the time the slowly grown group steps outdoors. Normally, lunch is only five minutes away, but recent thawing and refreezing of the snow had resulted in Finland being covered by a solid inch of ice. It is 12:50 by the time the group steps into Maukas.

Ten minutes and one lap through the buffet later, everyone is ready to eat. The Finn starts with the soup of the day. Here, it is important to not forget the correct topping to match the soup. Since it is Thursday, every lunch place in Finland serves pea soup with mustard. Don’t question it. Next, it is time for the mangled mess of twelve different things obtained at the buffet, all mixed together since the plate is not big enough. The goal is to fit the maximum amount of food in your stomach, and there is no rush to reach this goal. In the meantime, our Finn sips on a glass of kalja, a horrible malty concoction the color of dirt and tasting like watery bovril. Half an hour later, it is time for coffee and dessert. The latter is typically quite nice, and, like the soup, weekday specific. Thursdays means pancakes with strawberry sauce. Finally, the Finn grabs a piece of bread to refill any potential stomach volume on the ten-minute slip-and-slide back to the office and voilà, arriving back at 14:00 to continue work.

It is this single meal that shapes the rest of the day. In order to not be too hungry before lunch, come in late to work, maybe ten AM. A single vitamin D3 tablet should be enough for the morning. In the afternoon, replace typical meals with copious amounts of coffee, don’t be scared to drink five or six cups a day. This enables you to stay late at work, which isn’t a problem, since you will not be cooking at home. Instead, a piece of toast or a bowl of cereal should get you through the rest of the day.

However, every new concept pushes out something old. Indeed, there seems to be a cost associated with gaining the superpower of the one-meal day and that is the ability to be perfectly content eating crappy food – an ability I had expertly honed during my PhD. I do wonder how my stay in Finland will shape me. Impervious to cold? Inability to handle physical money? Intolerance to poor digitalization? Anti-slip gait? Only time will tell.