Arrival and First Impressions

After a slightly hectic adventure, Sophia was finally able to begin her Semester in Amsterdam! Read about her travels, arrival, and first impressions!

Hey there, finally from Amsterdam!

Miracles happen, otherwise I wouldn’t be here right now. Let me start with my move from Italy to the Netherlands. My plan was to bring all my things to Munich with the help of my father and then directly take a flight to Amsterdam. However, COVID made it a bit more difficult… first of all I had to rebook the flight at least 4 times, including two days before my departure which turned out to be my greatest luck, but more about that later… Okay, I left Italy on Saturday after having packed all night. Packing is not my favorite task because one has to make so many (life-changing!!! xD) decisions in a short time and I was really not sure how to fit all the stuff in just one car - but unexpectedly, it did fit! That was miracle number one.

To avoid quarantine in Germany my original flight was scheduled for Saturday afternoon, however, it was canceled and the only possible flight was Sunday morning. Anyway, I decided to directly go to the airport, do the Corona test for Amsterdam and stay there for the night. Luckily I did! I had my first shock at the airport when I realized that my luggage was weighing almost 30 kilos. The lady at the check-in counter was staring at the digital display showing the weight, then at my luggage, then at me…but, then she gave me the boarding pass. What a relief! That was miracle number two.

However, then I was shocked again when I realized that there were only 4 hours left until the test center closed, and I would need to have a negative COVID test result before boarding the plane. So I rushed to the testing center. There, they told me I should rebook the flight because the evaluation of the test could take up to 6 hours and after closing at 9 pm they would not analyze any more tests. As I had already checked in and a friend of mine had planned to visit me at the airport later in the evening, I decided to take this risk as well. Unfortunately, at 9 pm there was no result and I was hit by the reality that I would have to sleep at the airport, cancel the flight in the morning, and get back my overweight luggage. That’s when miracle number 3 happened. At a quarter to 10 pm, I received a message with a negative test result!!! Probably, someone had decided to work overtime. Lucky me! :D

The night at the airport was not the best, but I was happy to finally be able to fly! I watched the movie Tenet which I can really recommend. With a new day comes a new chance - finally sitting in the airport, the pilot announced that our flight was the first one and the runway still had to be cleared of snow. It had snowed all night and… whatever, it took them 45 minutes, which was also my transfer time in Munich. In Frankfurt, I really hurried but the plane had already left. I managed to rebook another flight in the morning, but in order to make that flight I needed to leave the transit zone and check-in all over again. Anyone who ever had to change planes in Frankfurt can probably relate with the following: searching for the check-in counter was…difficult. At one point in the hall with all the check-in counters, there was no light display but a long queue. I somehow sensed that this was the place for me to go and the service personal confirmed that. Later at the security checkpoint, there was shouting followed by police intervention… To make it a little shorter, I arrived in Amsterdam at some point, but my luggage had not.

Oops, this text is already quite long! I will write about my first impressions of Amsterdam in another blog :)

See you then!

#studyinamsterdam #PPEstudent