Amsterdam Arrival: The Chaos, The Rain, and Finding My Way
I graduated, packed my bags, and decided to take some time to explore the world. First stop: Amsterdam. Spoiler alert—I was not as prepared as I thought.
I arrived at Schiphol Airport feeling a mix of excitement and nerves. But as soon as I stepped off the plane, I realized how badly I had underestimated this adventure. No phone service, no exact address for my friend’s place, and zero understanding of the local public transportation system. Solid start, right?
Relying on the airport’s Wi-Fi, I managed to find a rough idea of where my friend lived and hopped on a bus. The announcements weren’t in English (obviously), but I figured out which road to get off on. And then the real fun began: standing on the unfamiliar street, in the rain, without a clue which building was hers. I didn’t even know the apartment number.
Desperate, I started calling out her name in the middle of the complex, hoping she’d miraculously hear me from a window. No luck. The rain was picking up, and I was starting to feel the full weight of my misadventure. Panic started to creep in. I asked a kind stranger to borrow his phone, but of course, I didn’t have her number memorized. He looked at me like I was unhinged (fair assessment) and left me to my predicament.
I stood there, cold, drenched, and genuinely terrified. How had I managed to show up in a foreign country without solid plans? Just as I was resigning myself to my fate, another person walked by. I tried again, asking if I could use their phone. This time, I attempted to email my friend. Naturally, she wasn’t checking her emails. So, I followed her on Instagram, but her account was private. Why would she accept a random follow request from an account that seemed like a stranger?
Then, in a flash of desperation and genius, I realized I could use the stranger’s hotspot to get online. I finally DMed her myself, and hallelujah—it worked!
That rocky start pretty much sums up the beginning of my solo adventure.
I had a moment where I thought, I have no idea what I’m doing, I’m not cut out for this, and I need to go home. It wasn’t true, but wow, was I shaken.
Thankfully, things turned around. I had an amazing time with my friend and another one of our friends who met us there. We explored Amsterdam’s coffee shops and cafés, marveled at the art in the Moco Museum, strolled through Vondelpark, took a canal boat ride, and experienced the city’s nightlife.
By the end of this leg of my trip, though, I was still terrified at the thought of continuing alone. The idea of traveling without my friends felt impossible. Little did I know, this was just the beginning of a journey that would test my limits and reshape my perspective on solo travel.
