Hallo Amsterdam

Four days ago I said goodbye to my parents at the airport in Newark, New Jersey to go get on a 7 hour and 20 minute flight to Amsterdam. Between my fear of flying and my lack of experience alone in cities, especially foreign cities, I was nervous, despite everyone telling me I was about to have the time of my life. 

Now, three days into orientation, and I’m starting to warm up to the city already. I had a veggie burger and a beer with all of the Semester in Amsterdam students tonight, and even knew how to take the metro back to the Student Hotel without the GPS. Orientation has been very helpful in getting us used to all of the unfamiliar parts of living in Amsterdam, such as the metro and biking rules, as well as Dutch culture and how Dutch students tend to treat their studies. 

The metro is definitely a notable difference between Amsterdam and US cities like New York or Boston. The metro is clean, easy to use, and very modern. One of my biggest fears coming here was getting lost in the metro system, as I’ve admittedly done that in New York City before, but now that is the least of my worries. 

Also, I always knew Amsterdam was known for its biking. Even when looking up pictures of Amsterdam before coming, I was amazed by the amount of bikes I saw in every picture. However, I don’t think anything could have prepared me for the amount of bikes I have seen. They have entire parking lots full of bikes, double decker bike racks, and the bikes are really treated as a part of the road, with designated street lights and everything. I love how accessible the whole city is, whether by foot or bike or metro. This is something that I am definitely not used to, coming from the suburbs of Connecticut as well as an isolated college campus in the middle of a small town in Maine. 

I’m very excited to start classes on Monday and see how different they are from those in the US. During orientation, they explained many differences we should expect to encounter in our classes, but I’m interested to see how it plays out. 

I also officially move into my room for the semester tomorrow after staying in a hotel room for 3 nights, which will hopefully make this city start to feel more like home.