Text and photos by Paula Miuh
Notes of an 18-year-old teenager
who moved alone to a country she had
never visited before.
I have never had the ardor or at least the desire to move to a country like the Netherlands. I have always dreamed of visiting Great Britain, thanks to the history, culture and, of course, the English humor. I had only heard opinions about the Dutch that frightened me enormously and made me wonder more and more often “Where am I going?”.
And that is how I arrived: with an apple in my stomach, two heavy bags and three hours of sleep, at the Amsterdam airport. “Your train arrives in two minutes, we have to find platform 12!”, shouted my friend, who lived in Amsterdam, unlike me, who still had a long way to go. By the time we reached the platform, the train to Rotterdam was at its last whistle. I jumped on the train, and my friend crams in my suitcase, which was almost stuck in between the train doors. Me on the train, her on the platform. We realize that we did not even say goodbye properly to one another and we smile lost in order to hide our nervousness.…
I do not think I managed to realize too much, to analyze my fears and sensations that I was already coming out of the subway where other people’s voices bounced off. I realized I was in the city center. To my right I saw the cube houses, to my left – the Markthal, and across the road – the University.
“Going to an unknown world for the first time is not so difficult. It is harder to return to that world.”
I felt out of place. These were the only locations I recognized from the pictures on the internet and they were all in front of me. Not knowing where to go, I did the most rational thing: on the first wi-fi network I find, I write to a close person from home and I complain that I do not know where to go. I realize I am being ridiculous and I ask someone the way to my campus…
Finally, going to an unknown world for the first time is not so difficult. It is harder to return to that world after staying home. You already know what is coming. There is no anticipation or fantasy about what awaits you. You know that you are returning to a dormitory with cheap furniture, with no TV or carpet, the walls of which coldly embrace your new life, and which are the only witnesses who see how you study, eat, watch movies, sleep, cry and dance…
