Recently, I have been thinking a lot about buzzwords, as in, phrases that have the explicit intent of sounding cool, rather than conveying meaning. This definition does invoke a negative connotation, but I think that is somewhat unfair. At least in science, a good buzzword can be quite appropriate and a useful tool: When explaining a concept to a person outside your field, use a buzzword (‘I am a rocket scientist!’) to allow the other person to get an immediate rough idea what you are talking about. When talking to your boss, use a buzzword to glance over an unimportant point (‘We threw some rocket science at it and found...’). And, of course, when sitting at the coffee table with your colleagues, use buzzwords as a meme (‘I mean, it’s not rocket sci- ah wait.’). This will inexplicably pass for humor, despite every person at the table having heard the joke hundreds of times.

But beware the buzzwords and their sneaky power! For I have made two curious observations: First, the allure of buzzwords does not lessen when knowing that the buzzwords are, in fact, buzzwords. Second, the allure of buzzwords does not lessen with time exposed to them. Ten years of being a physicist in my field had not sufficiently strengthened my mind’s defenses and I found myself inexplicably drawn out of my lifelong home of Heidelberg at the age of 28 to pursue the evanescent buzzword. Apparently, I had heard such terms as ‘entanglement’, ‘teleportation’, and ‘quantum gravity’ one too many times, and now I was contemplating my life choices sitting next to a 7-foot giant in the middle seat of a Lufthansa flight headed for the cold, dark wasteland that is HEL.

Helsinki Airport on a Sunday in October is the essence of Finland. Large, open spaces with minimalist, light wooden structures. Immaculately clean, eerily quiet, devoid of life. A food court with Mexican, Japanese, and ‘American’, but nothing under 15€. A plethora of color-coded signage designed to reduce the risk of having to talk to a person. I follow the signs for the train and find myself on an escalator descending into a giant, perfectly cuboid cavern. The walls are concrete. There are no embellishments. Forty meters below, a wide tunnel leads into what certainly will be a 21st century Mines of Moria. After walking along the tunnel for five minutes, no cyber-Balrog has appeared. Instead, I find myself in a large cavern, one rail line on either side. The Wi-Fi is perfect. The ticket app is in English. The train leaves every eight minutes.

Aalto University is not technically in Helsinki, but on the other side of a shallow bay dotted with small, tree-covered islands and peninsulas. A network of bridges connects the two sides, but everyone uses the Metro: the Helsinki-area subway that takes you in 15 minutes from the center of Helsinki straight to the Aalto campus. Surrounded largely by water and covered almost entirely in forest, this is like no other campus I have seen. Identical-looking red brick and glass buildings are strewn around haphazardly in clearings. Some roads connect the buildings, but more often than not, you will find yourself walking along a forest path.  The exception is the central square, which almost looks like a real town (minus the cars). Here, you find the Metro, tram, and bus station, together with the heart of any Finnish center of population: the shopping center (more on this later).

It is not yet dark, and I drag my suitcases to the temporary scientist housing Aalto offers. I enter a code to get in, receive my key from a key-dispenser-machine, and take the elevator up. I get into my room without having spoken to an actual person since entering Finnish airspace. My apartment is expensive as hell, but three times the size of my tiny room in Heidelberg. For some reason, it has eighteen chairs. The balcony has glass windows. The common-use sauna is on the top floor. This will be my home. I have come here chasing buzzwords: Investigating gravity in quantum-mechanically entangled mesoscopic systems, blah blah blah. But on my first day in Finland, I realized something more important. All my life, I was always an outsider: a neat freak, the quiet one in conversations, the guy trying to throw technology at everything, vehemently anti-automobile. In Germany, I was the odd one out. Here, I fit right in.