The diary of a Scot in Amsterdam

Of course, it is traditional pretty much everywhere to celebrate New Year, and nowhere more so than in my native Scotland. I had arranged a wee party last year, the first year that I had been in the Netherlands at this time. Since I was planning to be once again in Amsterdam, I decided that it would be nice to arrange something this year, and emailed the other DAI students to see if anyone was still about and felt like meeting up. Of course, many people had gone back to their own countries for the time being, others had their own plans, and so it ended up being a very modest party indeed.

In fact, almost non-existent. Having only decided to actually email people on the 31^st, it ended up just being myself and Astrid, and one solitary guest in the form of Jae-min. A few others got lost along the way, due to the trams shutting early, etc.

OK, so one guest was more than none, and I had made sure to go buy some fireworks as is traditional here; this meant we had something to entertain ourselves with, and so as midnight tolled and everyone else in Amsterdam went crazy and started setting off bangers and firecrackers in the middle of the street, we were ready to do the same. You can buy quite a lot of (small) fireworks for €20 or so, and it was nearly 1am before we had set them all off. We could have done with some really big rockets, though.

The next morning I did feel pretty down, however. I came to the realisation that I really don’t know so many people here, which seems so very different to when I was still living in Scotland. In the last half year or so I have become less and less social, which has naturally not helped the situation. It seems I need to make a bit more of an effort and meet some new folks.

When you have lived in a place for a long time, as was the case in Glasgow, you build up a large network of friends and aquaintances without even realising it. In the excitement of moving to another country, I had not really noticed that this was of course not the case here. Now that the shock of the new is past, it feels quite lonely all of a sudden. In any case, I need to get myself out and about a bit more in 2008, that is for sure.