I’ve tried to write this post a few times, a bit unsure of where to start or even where to go. How do you sum up a year of living in a new city, country, and continent in one post? Especially when that year was also a year of a global pandemic that virtually shut everything down?
When I first moved, the biggest question was: how are you enjoying living in Amsterdam? My canned response was, “I love it!” But there are nuances. I think there always will be, no matter where you go, but those were particularly exacerbated by the fact that a day after I moved literally everything shut down. I spent my first several months here with virtually nowhere to go beyond the grocery store and for walks in Vondelpark. In some ways, I was really grateful for the pandemic because it allowed me to ease into life in Amsterdam: I wasn’t hopping from one thing to another to try to squeeze everything in. I wasn’t feeling a ton of FOMO. And with the lack of tourists, it was so much easier to learn my way around, and let’s be honest, learn how to ride a bike in a city like this. (I did have a nasty crash within my first few weeks. I ran into a pole that the friends I was with still refer to as the “Megan pole” when they pass it.)
But it was also very strange starting a new job entirely virtually for months. It was strange to try to make friends. It was strange to try to date. It was strange all around.
By the time summer hit, things opened up a bit and I made some expat friends and found some places I really liked. I’d taken a ton of walks and thousands of photos. I spent a lot of time by the canals, swimming in canals, having drinks at the restaurant terraces, sneaking away from work early to go to the beach, and planning trips to other European destinations (managed to get to Belgium, Greece, and Italy when the restrictions here were lifted).
As the autumn crept in, work got ridiculously busy and I sort of forgot about life around me. The shit weather didn’t help either, and I spent most days indoors or sneaking out to Amsterdam Bos or Vondelpark or for a long walk through the city when it was actually nice out.
And as the holiday season was getting closer, I noticed a sort of change within myself. I wasn’t happy with the location where I was living. It was in Oud-Zuid, which is a beautiful, safe, and chill neighborhood, but I was also feeling a bit isolated there. The closest friend I have in that area is a doctor and was working a lot of hours because of Covid, so between her hours and the risk of Covid, we weren’t seeing each other much. And all my other friends lived in the Jordaan, which felt like a pain in the ass to get to (and that’s saying a lot considering prior to moving here I was driving an hour to an airport, sitting in the airport for an hour, then taking a 2-hour flight to sit in another airport for an hour or more to take another 1-hour flight to my final destination for work every week).
It was at that point that I had a long chat with myself about what I wanted from the experience of living in Amsterdam. Having come from downtown Nashville, my immediate thought was “I just want quiet.” I didn’t want the noise of pedal taverns and karaoke buses that I’d grown accustomed to staying a block from Nashville’s Broadway. That’s what ultimately led to my decision to move to Oud-Zuid. But the more I thought about it after living there for 8 months, the more I realized it wasn’t what I wanted. Randomly one day I checked out one of the real estate sites to just see what was available in the Grachtengordel (honestly figuring I’d never be able to afford anything, but still curious). When you think of living in Amsterdam, what do you picture? For me, it was a beautiful monumental apartment in a historic building overlooking a canal right in the center of everything. And that random day I decided to check out the real estate site, I found exactly that. Within my price point. I immediately went to see it, fell in love with it, and decided to rent it. A month later, I moved in.
So then everything was perfect, right? Well, the location was. The apartment was. I was living my dream of being in this gorgeous home with herringbone floors and a ceiling medallion, with a marble kitchen and wainscoting details in the living room accenting the fireplace-cum-TV cubby. Everything was so beautiful and gezellig. The view from my apartment looks right over a gorgeous canal and I can hear the same church bells every hour that Anne Frank heard from her attic hideout. I got a puppy (George Costanza is his name) which allowed me to explore the city multiple times a day with him. Sometimes at night when all the street lamps and Christmas fairy lights were on, I’d have to pinch myself and remind myself it was real.. I had made this life I wanted for so long come true. And then I’d tear up a little bit about it. Yet, in spite of all of these amazing things, my mental health was starting to take a major toll.
In mid-December, right around my birthday, I was feeling increasingly exhausted. No matter what I did, I felt tired and sad. It was a combination of a lot of things, but I think the biggest thing was the unknown of the future. The unknown of when do I see my family and friends again? The unknown of when do I find my travel identity again? And who am I without that? I finally started to open up to people about it sometime in January and found that I wasn’t alone in it. I think we all sort of hit this pandemic wall and for many of my expat friends, it was even worse without the knowledge of when we’d be able to see our families again. You go into a big move abroad knowing that you won’t see your family as much as you did when living in the same country, but you also anticipate that they’ll come to visit and you’ll go back for a visit. When that option is taken away, it’s a hard pill to swallow. But you spend the holidays FaceTiming and hoping that will fill the void for a while and that things will get better.
And that was about the time that the country went into a bigger lockdown, this time with a curfew. And we’ve now been in the middle of that since mid-December. I’ve been finding as many ways as I can to combat the anxiety and depression that comes with the inability to do much because things are closed and the weather is bad. We had a couple of lovely snow days, which meant some walks to take photos and have snowball fights with friends and grab hot chocolates to warm up afterward. Since dog owners can be out after curfew, I use that time to put in my headphones, blast music, and take a long walk with Georgie and have the city to myself. I’ve started making lists of things to do in Amsterdam when we’re allowed to again. Places to go in the Netherlands when we open up. And, of course, itineraries for trips around the world when it’s safe to travel again. But I also made a really big decision to go back to the US for a few weeks to see my family now that they’re vaccinated. I’m hoping that restores some of my energy and I can come back feeling refreshed and things in the city will be open and ready to explore again.
Before I moved to Amsterdam, I told myself “give it a year. If you hate it, you can leave. If you love it, you can stay as long as you want. You can stay until you don’t love it anymore.” I’ve given it a year. And what an odd year it’s been. It’s passed so quickly and I’ve seen and experienced so little of what life is truly like here that I feel like I haven’t truly been able to give it a chance because of circumstances beyond mine or anyone’s control. So, here’s to the next year of living here and hopefully getting to experience this city in a different way.
This post veered to a course entirely different than I’d originally imagined, which was one full of funny stories and oddities about living abroad. But I guess this is what I needed to actually share. (And I’ll share the other stuff another time.)
