It's easy to get the impression that the German air force is responsible for constructing all of Belgium's national airports. The first, at Haren, was opened following the First World War, on the opposite side of the German-built Zeppelin airfield at Evere — using the same field as the military. The second, current national airport, Brussels Airport at Zaventem, dates back to the Second World War, when — once again — German occupiers constructed an airport at Melsbroek, near the Belgian military backup airfield Steenokkerzeel. (Urban legend has it that the locals directed the Germans to Melsbroek, as it was an area often enveloped in fog.)
By 1948, civilian aviation in Belgium had outgrown Haren aiport, and Melsbroek was designated as the new national airport. However, in 1956 history repeated itself, as the Belgian authorities decided to construct a new airport in preparation for the 1958 World's Fair, utilising the same runways, but with the new terminal buildings located in Zaventem. Unable to shake its martial past, the old civilian airport is now used by the Belgian air force (as Melsbroek Air Base), sharing its runways with the current civilian airport at Zaventem — making this perhaps the only airport in Europe at which one can land and take-off from runways originally constructed by German occupational forces.
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The most common urban myth surrounding Sweden's largest airport, Stockholm-Arlanda, is that its name is pun on the Swedish verb "landa" ("to land"), and that it was chosen by a naming contest held by Sweden's largest weekly magazine. While a contest was in fact held when construction commenced of new airport in the Swedish capital region, capable of handling intercontinental traffic, the contest jury chose to endorse the name originally suggested by the projects toponymist. Derived from Arland, the archaic name of Ärlinghundra hundred where the airport is situated, the new airport's name had an "a" added to be analogous with other Swedish place names ending in "-landa" ("land of"), making Arlanda in fact the "Land of Streams" (with "Ar-" being an ancient Swedish form of "å", the noun for "stream".)
Despite the somewhat droll name, Arlanda merely lands one in one of the dullest airports in Europe, where the myth of the progressive, organised Swedish society is done in by something as rudimentary as lack of clear signage. (Even smaller airports in Sweden mange to make the transition from the international to the domestic terminal smoother.) Hence its main claims to fame remain having once been listed as an emergency landing site for NASA's space shuttle, the Jumbo hostel (a decommissioned Boeing 747-212B converted to a 76 bed hostel), its policy to never close due to snowfall, and that Sweden's first Starbucks franchise opened here last February.
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