Between October 2019 and February 2020, I lived in Berlin in order to finish my degree at the Technical University. I decided to make the most of my stay. Meaning: I went to the gym every day, wrote a master thesis on good (and not so good) scientific practices, flew a Cessna and an Airbus A320 in a flight simulator, and went on many discovery trips across the city, in search of art and/or food. This is what this article is about — my subjectively chosen top places. The stuff TripAdvisor doesn’t tell you about, really.

Hyvää itsenäisyyspäivää, Suomi! Today, on the 6th of December, the tiny, beautiful Nordic country of Finland celebrates 102 years of being independent.

On this occasion, I decided to write about a data visualization project I did for fun in September when I was doing an Intermediate course in Finnish. After two years of studying the language which inspired Tolkien to create Elvish, I realised that I have been for a while in the situation which Germans call “Not seeing the forest because of all the trees.”

Finnish has a gazillion of word types (for nouns, adjectives, numbers, etc) and verb types (4, 6 or 7 depending on which grammar books you use). Multiply these with the 14 grammar cases which always change the word in some way. For comparison, German has just 4 cases (nominative, accusative, dative and genitive). …

Moving to a new country is associated with many challenges. We talk and search for information about many of them such as finances, finding housing, bureaucracy, while we often ignore others. Such a challenge is stress: physical and emotional. After ten years in various countries such as Germany, Finland and Japan, I have gathered some observations that I describe in this article — from the role of oatmeal to what we can learn from Golden Retriever dogs to deal with stress. (The article was first published in Bulgarian on my blog.)

The preparation

Leaving a country suddenly is relatively rare. There is usually a period of several months to prepare. Aside from gathering information and packing luggage, this is also the time for psychological adjustment, getting used to thinking about the new place. At the same time, saying goodbye to the old place is just as important. Before every new move, I try to see friends and visit my favourite places. I am actively avoiding the idea of ​​a “last” meeting and discuss the opportunities for future meetings. Visiting my favourite places, I mentally thank the city for its hospitality towards me. …

Today, the 24th of May, is the Day of Cyrillic alphabet and Bulgarian culture. It is also the day of high school graduation. Ten years ago, my schoolmates and I wore our most beautiful dresses and celebrated the end of an era. All doors were open for us. Recently, I decided to have a quick look where everyone is and since I’m passionate about data, it turned out as a data visualization with sankeymatic.

And when I say “everyone”, I mean my schoolmates from the three schools I’ve been to: my primary school (1st to 5th grade), the Math & Natural sciences high school (6th and 7th grade) and the German high school (8th to 12th grade) in Burgas, Bulgaria. …

Startup experience was one of the courses I was impatient to take at Aalto. Organised by Aalto Venture Programme (AVP), it is an essential part of the EIT Digital Master, a two years masters degree at leading technical universities in Europe developing the tech leaders of the future. EIT stands for European Institute of Innovation and Technology. During my exchange year at Aalto, I visited many courses offered for EIT students and they are some of my closest friends here. Startup experience was a new type of bonding for some of us.

I applied as a CEO with a concrete idea for smart fashion tech. As a CEO, I had the great chance to choose my teammates. I thought this is going to be easy since I have worked a long time in recruitment. Choosing the people I will work with for the next three months was different than I imagined — after screening skills and experiences, I realised how much more important for me is the motivation of the people to work with me, as cliche as it sounds. Startup experience is a mandatory course for the EIT students while for me is my own choice — this is already quite a difference in the motivation. I’m glad I was able to find brilliant people from diverse backgrounds and many hidden talents who liked my idea and were willing to get deeper into back pain for three months. …

We are Pulseath, an international team of entrepreneurial tech students at Aalto University in Finland. We want to revolutionize the way back pain is treated, with the power of the newest technology. For that, we went on the field and spoke with people.

What people say is not what people do

We spoke with different people about their back pain and two groups crystalized out of that: office people who sit for long hours and frequent gym goers. Both groups experience back pain regularly — out of inactivity or too much and asymmetrical muscle activity. Very often, these groups overlap. We asked the latter group “How do you know that you exercise correctly?”. Many reacted with surprise, honestly saying that they don’t think about it, that they simply know they do it correctly. A professional athlete confessed with a sad smile “When it starts hurting, it is already too late — you’ve been doing it incorrectly for way too long.” Many of the people rely a lot on the trainers to correct them. We went to numerous gyms and training classes to observe what really goes on — namely, trainers barely have time to correct everyone in the room. There was a clear need for feedback and for seeing their own progress among people who exercise regularly. …

So I came again to Finland, this time for an exchange year at its interdisciplinary forerunner university — Aalto. When I started using the web portal to register for lectures, I had to go through a short questionnaire. Coming from oh-so-concerned-about-data Germany, I rose eyebrows at the question if I’d allow information about the lectures I visited including my grades to be forwarded to third parties including recruiters. How little I knew about the infrastructure behind it at that point…

An illustration of the different approach towards digitalization between Finland and Germany are the student cards. Back in the days at the University of Frankfurt, I had a plastic card identifying both that I am a student and that I can travel anywhere in the Bundesland of Hessen. I could re-validate it every semester at a machine on the university campus which requires me to go there personally. At TU Berlin, I got a plastic card too and they would send me a sticker via post to prove that I am still a student but for double identification maybe?, I had to print and carry with me another piece of paper saying that I am a student. In Finland you can forget about all that — there is an app for proving that you are a student called frank. Alternatively, you can also purchase a plastic card for 16 Euro. What does the app do besides proving that you are a student? Discounts, of course. And among the discounts, there is plenty of the usual stuff — cinema, museums, gym. But also restaurants, bars, clubs…and surprisingly, even the two biggest sex shops. Transport card is yet still on paper and requires a personal visit to an HSL center to buy it. …

I remember the first time seeing the banner of Slush and how I felt I want to be there, I want to be part of it. It was at the time as I was organizing my internship at a start-up in Finland, November 2016. Now, one year later my wish came true.

Slush is huge. As much as I want it, I can’t talk to every each and one of the 20k attendees and can’t multiply myself to see all the talks. So, I had to choose beforehand where to go and what to do. My main motivation for Slush was to connect with inspiring people and to gather ideas. But you live in Berlin, you’d say, aren’t there events with inspiring people there too? Indeed, there are and I have been to numerous of them. Yet, Berlin has for me the attitude of “I am the center of the world”. Most firms and people are content with being part of it and operating on the German market which is big. Currently, I’m building upon my bachelor’s degree in psychology with a specialization in Human factors/Human-computer interaction. So I’m excited about innovation, usability, design, technology that will make difference. And so far, I couldn’t get exactly that level of global thinking in Berlin. …