I thought I’d use this blog to talk about something a little different: the hard part of traveling abroad. I know it’s easy to see these blogs and my social media and think everything is rosy in my life. And for the most part? It really has been amazing for the past four months. I’ve had an incredible time traveling Europe, experiencing different cultures, and learning about the world. I wouldn’t trade my time abroad for anything. But studying abroad and traveling alone for the most part does come with its fair share of frustrations. I’d like to talk about those in this blog, because for whatever reason those frustrations all seemed to come to a head for me in Amsterdam.
By the time my trip to Amsterdam rolled around in mid-April toward the end of my time abroad, I was running very low on funds. As someone who is funding their education and everyday living costs through work and loans, I should really have anticipated this issue and budgeted better. I got a little caught up seeing how many trips my classmates were planning and thought surely I could do the same, forgetting that their parents were funding them and they had very different budgets than my own.
To be truthful, I sort of anticipated my money trouble from the get go. But I also thought that the trade off of being a little stressed over funds would be worth it for the lifelong memories. And for the most part? I still stand by that. But I woefully under-estimated just how stressful running that low on money would be. Toward the end there I was eating a $1 burger from McDonald’s for virtually every meal when I couldn’t get groceries while traveling. I finally felt like I was getting the “true” student experience.
So this was weighing on my mind even before the trip came. I wasn’t going to cancel, because I had already booked the flights and lodging at the beginning of the semester, and I didn’t want to waste the opportunity to go somewhere new. But the stress of my nonexistent budget did put pressure on me throughout the weekend. You never know when you might need some emergency funds, especially when traveling alone in a foreign country. Let’s just say I was super careful when I crossed the street (bikers can be brutal in Amsterdam), I didn’t stay out past 11, and I made extra sure to avoid the sketchy parts of town.
Then on top of that, there was the fact that Amsterdam, for whatever reason, sells out its main attractions ten times faster than any other city I’ve visited. This was likely because I was unaware that the world famous tulip festival would be happening while I was in town so there was an insane volume of tourists. Whatever the reason, I ended up not being able to see the main museum I wanted to visit Amsterdam to see in the first place: the Anne Frank annex.
I, like countless others worldwide, hold The Diary of Anne Frank very close to my heart. My own grandmother escaped from Vienna prior to the holocaust and passed her own journal on to me. I can’t read it, since its in German for the most part, but I regularly pull it out and marvel over the hurriedly penciled thoughts and beautiful sketches. I have very fond memories of reading Anne’s diary as a young girl. I liked to imagine my grandmother’s diary read similarly to Anne’s: regular, relatable girl things. Then, when I was in high school I played Margot Frank in a community theatre production of The Diary of Anne Frank. That play happens to be my favorite theatre experience I’ve ever had to this day. I still meet up with the cast on an almost annual basis- for Hanukkah celebrations, mostly.
So when I saw the Anne Frank Museum was sold out, and there was almost no way to get tickets… Let’s just say some tears were shed. I had read online that 20% of the tickets were released on the day of, so every morning in Amsterdam I woke up at the crack of dawn to get in the online queue, and… still failed to get tickets after hours of waiting, hitting refresh, and hoping. So that was definitely not my favorite activity.
And then, and then, AND THEN!!! The Van Gogh Museum was also sold out a week in advance, which was the second thing I was most excited to see. Amsterdam did me so dirty in terms of museums.
BUT, there were still some amazing things I got to do. I had a great free walking tour of the city with an awesome and very knowledgeable local guide. My guide was also coincidentally a very funny stand up comic, and invited me to his show that evening. Amsterdam apparently has a thriving international comedy scene.
I also took an insanely beautiful canal tour (booked at an earlier time when I still had a budget to speak of). This is the number one thing I recommend you do while in Amsterdam. The city is really meant to be traveled by boat.
I also visited Rijksmueum, the Dutch national museum dedicated to art and history. There I saw some gorgeous art and world-famous masterpieces by the likes of Vermeer and Rembrandt. I actually went there twice in my three day stay, since I couldn’t seem to get tickets to any other museum in town.
To be honest? Throughout my stay I didn’t love the city. There was something that felt a little off about the atmosphere, a little inauthentic somehow. I know this was probably me being incredibly snobby, and I know that I was in a melancholy mood for reasons that had nothing to do with the city itself. But there honestly did seem to be something missing to me, some characteristic charm that I had experienced elsewhere in my travels, but not here. Amsterdam didn’t seem like a real city beyond the tourist trap; all weekend I had hardly encountered a single Dutch person.
Then, on the Sunday evening I was meant to leave, something magical happened. The tourist crush flooded out of the city and headed for the airport. The streets emptied. And the real Amsterdam emerged.
All around the city, windows blinds went up, front doors were thrown open, and the Dutch came out from hiding. Students pulled dining tables out of their tiny flats onto their small terraces by the canals to eat dinner, smoke a cigarette, and socialize with the neighbors. Parents began their grocery trips with toddlers strapped into baskets on the front of their bikes. Retirees with boats went for leisurely cruises, sharing a bottle of wine with their friends. The heartbeat of the city slowed down. It became a completely different- and utterly captivating- Amsterdam.
The whole worrisome thing became worth it for those last few hours at dusk when I got the privilege of wandering those streets and experiencing the city as it’s meant to be.
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