Hey, y’all! I’m Winson, an electrical engineering student from Martel. I’m interested in health research and technology, especially neuroengineering. The Netherlands and France are major centers of research for neuroengineering and I’ve come here to learn about the environment and culture of these countries. I’m excited to go to the parks and green spaces in Amsterdam and especially excited to check out the cat museum. I don’t have any other plans besides eating a bunch of food and trying to not get too lost.
Historically, I am awful at navigation and all things travel. This problem has been magnified since I’ve come to an unfamiliar country on my own, as exemplified by my first few hours here. After landing, I realized that I didn’t know the code to my suitcase and never bothered to ask before locking it. Oops. My parents were asleep, so I took my suitcase, started from 000 and counted up. Luckily, the code started with 3 so I was spared about 600-something extra tries. After scurrying away from the baggage claim, I spent about an hour in the Schiphol train station trying to figure out how to get to Amsterdam Centraal. Unsurprisingly, I couldn’t figure out which train track to go to, so I gave up for a bit and tried to get my European SIM card working. Unfortunately, I broke the SIM eject tool after a few tries. Y’all, this was a low point :(. I was about to camp at the Burger King and eat my sorrows away. But through sheer drive and willpower (uh…I wasn’t that hungry), I put away my phone and looked around the train station again, finally noticing a help desk. I toddled over and asked for help, since clearly I wouldn’t get anywhere on my own. There, I got an OV-chipkaart and was led to the correct track. I got off the train at the correct station, but that was hard to mess up since the screens in the train were very clear. Walking out of the station, I saw some ferries and boarded one. At this point, knowing I was not to be trusted, I opened Google Maps. I realized the ferry I was on would take me far beyond the hostel (to the other side of Noord lol) and quickly switched before it left. I got to the hostel in one piece after that fiasco, so I’d say that’s a win. Also, the front desk gave me a paperclip after laughing at me for breaking the SIM tool (very kind of them).
Amsterdam is walkable, but not as much as I thought. Apparently I have to yield to cars and bikes? The amount of times I’ve been cut off by a car while the pedestrian signal was green is already more than when I visited Washington DC. Even so, the walkways are a lot nicer than the sidewalks back in the US. Something I don’t particularly like is how the color of the sidewalks change depending on the street you’re on. At one point I had no idea where I wasn’t supposed to be because the bike lanes, road, and sidewalks were all the same red brick pattern. The parks I’ve visited are nice. I’ve visited two, but unfortunately it wasn’t too relaxing because I still needed to watch out for bikes. The green spaces here are pretty though! Hopefully I get to visit more parks and also some gardens if I get the chance.
Meeting the University of Amsterdam students was cool. I heard from my group that almost all of the students in the class are international students studying business analytics. The people in my group were chill and one of them talked about how this class was more boring than their econometrics class (fantastic news for us). They all went to the same high school in Estonia and it was fun talking to them about their perspective on Amsterdam and Europe in general.
So far, Amsterdam is great. I love the walkability, weather, and architecture. The locals seem to be very friendly, but that could also just be because I’ve only chatted with the customs officer and people who work in the service sector :D. Looking forward to future adventures and hoping my ineptitude doesn’t waste too much time.
