CIA TuKY in 2014 – Summer in Turku vs. Internship abroad?

I was looking for summer jobs in Turku when I ran into a job offer of an online marketing internship in a company called CupoNation, located in Munich. I had never heard of this company nor considered spending this summer abroad. However, the description of the job sounded so fun, that I decided to throw in an application just to practice applying for a job in English. To my surprise, I got a Skype interview, a second interview, I was selected for the internship and in 3 weeks, I abandoned my safe summer job options in Turku and flew to Germany.

Of course, I faced the typical challenges when moving abroad. The first struggle was to find an apartment in such a short notice, which is not that easy especially without knowing the language. Munich is not famous for an endless offering of rooms located in good places or of being cheap. I applied for dozens of rooms and got very few answers to my emails written in English. If I got any, they were normally fraud or otherwise creepy- one guy even added my phone number on WhatsApp and suggested I could share a bed with him. In the end, I was very lucky though. I started writing in German with the help of Google Translate and searched for rooms in shared flats from Student-WG websites. I got one viewing for the same day my flight arrived to Germany. The room and the flatmates were really nice and the contract seemed reliable so I reserved the room by paying the deposit right away. The previous tenant moved out in 2 weeks in which time I was lucky stay at my friends’ place. Now, I am happily living in a student flat on a top floor of a building located very close to the center. The flat is located in a very hip area with lots of restaurants, cafés and bars and it is only about 200 meters from the riverside of Isar. I live with 6 flatmates, 3 girls and 3 guys, all German students. By bike, it only takes 20 minutes to go to work.

Morning walk, baguette and coffee by the river

Before I had a bike, I had to use the public transport. I soon learned that S-bahn is not trustworthy and it is anyway nicer to travel by a tram where you can see outside. The best way to get to work is still biking though. Everyone says that you don’t need to buy a ticket for the local transport and that they never got checked during many months or even years. After obediently paying for my tickets for the first week, I started to follow this advice. I was very unlucky as on my third time travelling without a ticket the inspectors stepped in in the exact wagon I was sitting in. The Finnish blue eyes do not really work here so I warmly recommend buying the ticket if you have to use the public transport.

Visiting Dachau concentration camp near Munich

On the first week of my internship, I started to realize how nice the company, which I quite randomly had selected, actually was. There are about 120 employees whose average age is only 25. It is a young startup but extremely international. The Finnish team currently consists of 6 people. German, French, Italian, Indian, Brazilian, Finnish, Norwegian, Swedish and many other nationalities are well represented. The culture of the company is very relaxed and open and we spend a lot of time together after office hours as well. In the first week I was excited the table tennis, the football table, free breakfast cereals and fruits in the company kitchen and drinks and beers for after-work provided by the company. Now, I have also noticed how educating the job is and how much I learn about online marketing. My job is basically to do search engine optimization (SEO) and other online marketing related tasks. I was provided a training which continued for couple of weeks for a few hours a day. The rest of the days, I was working with my team and learning by doing in the team. I was also surprised how little our university studies actually teach us for doing this kind of practical marketing jobs. In fact, the only really relevant and valuable courses for me have proved to be MA8 Digital marketing and TJ5 Advanced excel. If you consider doing anything related to Internet in your future career, I highly recommend you to take these courses.

Barbeque by the river after work with some colleagues

I am extremely happy that I chose to leave for an internship abroad instead of doing a usual summer job in Finland. CupoNation is still relatively young company so we get to enjoy the start-up spirit and flexibility without heavy organizational structures. Instead of working in a big, traditional and well-known company, I also feel that I get more responsibilities and more variable tasks. In a young company, it feels like your ideas are valued and your effort matters more than in a bigger company. I also hope that this jump that I took into the unknown will add some value to my CV in the eyes of future employers anywhere in the Europe.

Munich is also a very nice city to live in. It is big, full of things to do and places to see, but still relatively clean and safe. The German culture is easy for Finns to fit in and it still surprises me how cheap the food and especially alcohol is here.

If you are interested in doing an internship in an internet start-up in Munich, check the open positions at CupoNation at www.cuponation.fi/avoimet-tyopaikat. I have not regretted my choice so far and I hope that more people would consider doing internships abroad.

Have a great summer & Viele Grüße aus München!