ECER 2012: Recap of Day 3, One of those days.

Day 3 was a day for excursions, and I had signed up for going on what was called the peatland-complex route. It was clear already when the bus left from the hotel that this would be a challenging day for my wind-protecting but not very waterproof jacket. As we left the bus to start a 6 km walk along a peatland forest that had been excavated some decades ago, the entire sky opened and my jacket fought the water bravely initially, but eventually gave up. Apart from one site were ditches had been blocked and trees cut, most of the forested peatland had too low water level. It is generally a warning-sign when you have to go down into the bottom of a 3 m ditch to find typical mire species. In one area the ditches had been blocked, and the trees had been cut, and this was the only site that looked like a nicely restored peatland. An odd sight in the middle of the peatland-forest was an old peat-excavator that had been left as a museum of old times. Since the peat excavation was still going on adjacent to the site, it felt as if perhaps it was not correct to refer to it as a period of degradation that now finally was over.

After the Peatland-complex route I did my best to find a place for the jacket to dry before it was time to head off to the guided tour of Budweiser Budvar brewery. My jacket had not dried, but a brewery is after all a building were people work indoors I thought (which says everything of my lack of visits to breweries). For some reason I had managed to get a booklet about restoration of Finnish boreal forests with me to the brewery that I walked around with. At least half of the guided tour was outdoors, and yes, the sky opened again. Realizing that I had the nice booklet about Finnish restoration of boreal forests, I used it as a desperate rain protection. I don´t know exactly how high the odds would be that the person in front of me would happen to be the author off the booklet, but this was one of those days, and when I heard him call out “No, it´s not supposed to be used like that”, I had stopped being surprised. Finns are nice people, and he allowed me to keep ruining his publication. Having only eaten an excursion sandwich at 11, I was quite hungry when it was time for the treat of beer in the cozy 2 degrees “warm” beer cellar. The tour finished with having a look at the bottling process were 40 000 beers were bottled every hour, and it was nice to see the recycling of bottles working first-hand. 

The tour was over, and at 21:00 I was back at the hotel, ready to eat an entire boar If I saw one. Finally, close to 22:00 I eventually got something to eat before it was time to rehearse the presentation I was going to give the day after.