How I became a Finn
After living here for over six years, I applied for Finnish citizenship in the spring and it was given to me on 21 August this year. In this blog post I am writing down a few personal thoughts about the process, how I feel about Finland, what this means to me now and to which extend it is related to my career. EU-citizenship Figure 1. The author as a newly naturalized EU-citizen visiting the European Parliament in Brussels for the first time. You have no idea how many people were wondering why I would apply for Finnish citizenship as a Swiss citizen. Well, it is true that Switzerland is in the Schengen area (even though it is not part of the EU) and that it was very easy to move to Helsinki in the first place. However, a few years back, before I was awarded my current fellowship, I considered alternative options to work outside of academia and as a chemist, I wondered if I could have worked for the European Chemical Agency (located in Helsinki). Except I couldn't as a Swi