Moving to Amsterdam

I moved to Amsterdam last September and never regretted the decision since. I have grown to absolutely love Amsterdam, and in this post I will explain why.

I am a Dutch girl, so moving to Amsterdam wasn’t moving to a different country for me. I come from a small town in the south of the Netherlands, which is an approximate two hour drive away from Amsterdam. For all you big country people out there, this must seem like nothing. For the Netherlands on the other hand, moving two hours away is like moving across the country (HAHA fun fact: you can drive for the south to the north of the Netherlands in approximately 3,5 hours). This results in the fact that the average people living in my hometown and all over the Netherlands I’m sure, aren’t really used to driving long distance. For this reason, my family and some of my friends already thought I was moving far away.

Anyways, the big difference between Amsterdam and my hometown is the international vibe going around. Don’t get me wrong, all through the Netherlands you can find all sorts of ethnicities. What is different about Amsterdam, is that it’s the home of so many international students and international people who work in, or nearby Amsterdam or just some cool international people enjoying a bit of time in Europe. By moving to Amsterdam, I found out that I LOVE living with international people. I moved into a three bedroom apartment in the West of Amsterdam which I first shared with a Canadian and a German girl, and later the German girl had to leave so we replaced her with a really fun energetic Australian girl. As the only non native English speaking one in the house, of course I sometimes struggled to find the right words, but I also learned a lot. On top of that, I could translate Dutch letters and websites for them. What I really liked about having an international home, was learning about the differences in habits and regulations etcetera between our homelands. On top of that it’s just great to share different ideas and views on the world.

The second thing I love about Amsterdam is the scenery. I love to just wander around and enjoy the old buildings and canals and being able to find new little hotspots all over town. I feel like in my hometown, me and my friends would pretty much hang out at the same few spots all the time, where we would always run into someone we knew because there just aren’t that many different places to hang out. In Amsterdam though, I like hanging out in different little places. It feels like you can experience something new every day and I love that feeling of possibilities all around.

The third thing I really love about Amsterdam is the feeling of acceptance that just lingers around everywhere. Whatever the colour of your skin, your sexual preference or your personal weirdness is like, nobody really cares. Isn’t that what all places should be like? People in my hometown were asking me if I wasn’t afraid walking in Amsterdam by myself ‘cause it must be dangerous. But honestly, Amsterdam doesn’t make me feel like that at all. It feels like you can just be, you can just belong. And what is more dangerous really, two girls in the south of the Netherlands biking on an empty road at 1am (because that’s what it’s like at this time in my hometown) or walking through a busy street in Amsterdam with a lot of potential witnesses? Also for non Dutch people, not all people in Amsterdam smoke weed all the time, it’s actually mostly the tourists. On top of that, even the entire red light district isn’t really a dangerous place, and if there is trouble, it’s almost always drunk tourists, not the people who live and/or work there.

Are you wondering about the weather? It’s definitely not always as sunny as on my pictures! The typical Dutch weather is more cloudy like the picture on top of this post or actually even more cloudy than that. But the thing about Amsterdam is, that the weather is just really unpredictable. For example these to pictures below. They were taken on 2 following days from exactly the same spot. The one with the blue sky was January 19th and the one with the frozen look I took the day before on January 18th.

So do you have any doubts in going to Amsterdam? Don’t! It has something for everyone, whether you would like to party or come and enjoy the scenery, I would highly recommend it! I will post about some spots to visit while in Amsterdam soon so stay tuned.

Have you ever been to Amsterdam or maybe even moved there yourself? Let me know what your experience was like below in the comment section.