queer – Page 4

Around the World: Imogen’s Story

15 June, 2025Leave a comment

Identified Patient

I am in Calgary today learning how to diagnose autism. The training is in the same hospital building where I was detained for a month and ultimately diagnosed with OCD when I was eleven. A month of one-way mirrors and cheese whiz toast and CBT worksheets. My current therapist sends me a message before I leave that says “I hope this trip is somehow good for you rather than jarring,” which I think was supposed to be reassuring but ends up coming off ominous.

At the Vancouver airport I text my partner and tell them I cannot stop thinking that I’ve forgotten something important and something terrible is going to happen. There must be a ritual I can do to prevent it, they joke. Ha ha ha. It turns out the feeling that I have forgotten something is correct, although the scale of the catastrophe is a little off. When I arrive at the Calgary airport and try to pick up my rental car, my driver’s license has expired two days earlier, and I have to get a cab. I had planned to maybe check out trendy restaurants that have popped up here since I left in 2004, but quickly I realize I’m going to be basically confined to the strip mall around my Best Western and the children’s hospital where my
course is being held. Wings clipped, I feel like I’m waiting for my sixteenth birthday so I can go through Peter’s drive-in for milkshakes or drive to the airport just to look at it, so I can start to imagine forward movement as a real possibility.

The view out the cab window is vast and empty and slow, and I realize I had forgotten how this place seemed to be a mismatch for the pace I wanted to go. Wheels spinning on ice, futility and pent up energy; knowing there was a whole big world out there where I wouldn’t be such an anomaly. In the parlance of CBT: the feeling didn’t necessarily tell me the truth. There was a whole big world out there, and I wouldn’t necessarily feel like less of an anomaly once I found it. But the idea of it was enough to give me traction, to propel me out of this place that always reminds me of how no one can hear you scream in space because there’s nothing for the sound waves to even bounce off of.

Did you know that it’s more common to be afraid of wide open spaces than it is to be claustrophobic? I am sure that I do not belong here. They gave me diagnostic powers by mistake, it is an administrative error. A Freaky Friday type mishap where I have woken up with unearned power and freedom. I spiral and sweat through the afternoon lecture, imagining all of the catastrophic sequelae of this mistake. My heart races. On the break I get an ice cream from the vending machine where my mom would get me ice cream before family therapy, like trying to coax a feral animal. Only she’s dead now, so I’m trying to coax myself back to productivity or achievement, to my hard-earned place on the other side of the glass this time. I am conscious that adult professionals probably don’t eat ice cream for lunch when surrounded by colleagues. At any second they may realize I’m an impostor, and send me back downstairs for toast, a PRN, a worksheet and a nap.

I go for a walk to try to feel better, and end up feeling sad and slow and lonely, a specific sensation that feels like dull prairie winter in my chest. Vancouver moves fast – my favourite restaurants and memories disappearing before I can make new ones. Calgary moves slow, the pancake restaurant I used to go to with my mom before skiing preserved like a bug trapped in amber. The steakhouse we’d go to after church. The dead mall, standing there like the husk of a giant insect, where I had my first job selling novelty swords to nerds with poor impulse control, and which I recognized recently when it was used as a set in The Last of Us. Everyone I could call from my previous life here has moved or died.

It is dense with memory and devoid of connection. When I was nineteen I saw another psychiatrist who told me he thought I had Asperger’s, which was a thing then. Likely because I looked at the floor while I talked to him, and told him that I believed that the problem was not depression or even OCD, but that “I suffered from a pervasive remoteness.”

These days I have mostly abandoned the CBT I learned when I was eleven at the Children’s hospital psych unit. I still eat cheese whiz on toast, because it feels like a hug. But in light of everything that’s happened, it feels unhelpful to say “that’s a catastrophic thought.” It’s trite, but the only thing that slows down my heart rate and lengthens my breath is gratitude. When I was thirteen I found queer youth group, and when I was fifteen I started volunteering to run it. When I was sixteen they started paying me, and I’ve been lucky to build that into a career as a therapist. The early parts of that were nurtured by old (to me) lesbians who wanted to see me be happy and succeed; who understood that I was doing my best in a hostile environment and wanted to believe in the idea that someone like me could be okay. You couldn’t take a kid under your wing like that now; it would be called grooming. But no one was ever creepy, and I wouldn’t be where I am now without them.

When I moved to Vancouver, queer people felt unfriendly and suspicious of difference. There were a lot of invisible divisions I struggled to intuit – the mirror is never just a mirror. No one was jumping to take me under their wing. I still had the embarrassing tells of someone from a town that hosted the national high school rodeo, whose social and cultural centre was a grain elevator, and where you could ride your horse to school and hitch it there. I used to think it was too easy here, that there wasn’t the kind of exposure to hostility that makes us tender with each other’s earnestness.

When I started writing this, what I didn’t want to happen was for it to turn into a kind of city-over-country supremacy that I think it’s easy for anyone, but maybe especially for queer people, to slip into without noticing. When we do that, what we’re actually trying to signify is the cruelty and stress of the places we grew up, but we tend to do so without examining our own capacity for cruelty that we pack up in our backpacks and Rubbermaid totes and bring with us across mountain ranges on Greyhound buses. I’d even hazard to guess that as much as we learn what to tolerate in relationships from our families of origin, we learn how to be in community in places that hurt us. From where I stand now, I know that under a lot of the cool disaffectedness that I used to be so intimidated by, there is often deep vulnerability.

What I brought with me was a pane of one-way glass, the pain of being observed and described, the specific pain of the identified patient. I roll the words around in my mouth. Nothing goes away until it teaches us what we need to know. I repeat it to myself over and over again like a mantra until my mouth is dry, and it seems to help. My heart slows down to match the pace of this place, the thing I couldn’t do when I was growing into myself

Around the World: Ryan’s Story

10 June, 2025Leave a comment

I used to think identity was something I had to wear like a badge.
Queer.
Person of Colour.
Canadian.
A neatly folded résumé of who I was supposed to be before anyone even knew my favourite food or how I take my coffee.

In Vancouver, I could feel the labels arriving before I did.
Like I walked into the room after my own footnotes.

But then I left.
Packed two suitcases and a nervous heart, and landed in Berlin —
a city colder than I expected, stranger than I imagined,
and somehow, freer than I’d ever known.

No one knew me there.
Not the barista who handed me my first Latte Macchiato with a crooked smile, not the cashier at Rewe who tossed my groceries with zero small talk, not the friend-of-a-friend at a Kreuzberg Altbau party who didn’t ask “where are you really from?” Or “what do you do for work?”
just asked, “what’s your sign?”

I said Cancer.
They said, “figures.”

And just like that, I wasn’t explaining myself.
I was just existing.

Berlin didn’t care what box I fit in.
It didn’t ask me to choose between my softness and my strength.
It didn’t ask me to be a role model or a symbol or a teachable moment.
It just asked me to be.
To show up.
To dance to pop EDM remixes in Schwuz or twerk at a Latin party in Lido.
To get lost on the winding Straßes.
To survive on Simit, Franzbrötchen and Club Mate.
To fall in and out of routines, and sometimes out of love.

And so I travelled.
Not just through Europe —
though yes, I did float through Stockholm,
sweated under the Barcelona sun,
and blinked at the beauty of Prague’s cobblestones at midnight —
but I also travelled through versions of myself.

The me who stood silently in museums.
The me who laughed too loudly in the S-Bahn.
The me who forgot to be afraid.
The me who wasn’t performing — wasn’t on display —
just living.

See, travel doesn’t just teach you about the world.
It teaches you about who you are when no one’s watching.
When there’s no audience.
No expectations.
No need to explain your history to justify your presence.

In Berlin, I was “the Canadian,” sure.
But that wasn’t code for “outsider.”
It just meant, “you’re not from here, but neither are we.”
I was allowed to take up space.
To make mistakes.
To speak German badly.
To start again.

And maybe that’s what travel gave me most —
the gift of not being anyone’s definition but my own.

In Vancouver, being queer and a person of colour was often the first thing.
Before my name.
Before my jokes.
Before my energy even had a chance to walk in the room.

But in Berlin, in those trains and cafés and moonlit strolls along the Spree —
I got to be just Ryan.

Not reduced.
Not erased.
Not tolerated
But revealed and accepted.

Because I am queer.
I am a person of colour.
And I’m also tender, and smart, and sometimes a little too dramatic.
I wear sheer shirts and glitter nail polish.
I write poems, I’ll never show anyone.
I miss my dog when I’m gone too long.
And I love citrus scents like they’re a personality trait.

And that — all of that — is who I am.
Not a headline.
Not a box.
But a body in motion.
A soul in translation.
A person in process.

Now I’m back.
Different city, same name.
Still me — but expanded.
And when I walk into rooms now, I don’t shrink.
I don’t lead with the résumé of what I am.
I just say, “Hi, I’m Ryan.”
And let the rest unfold.

Because travel didn’t change who I was.
It just reminded me I didn’t need to prove it.

So if you ever feel like you have to explain yourself before you’re allowed to be yourself,
if you ever feel like the world only sees you in fragments — go.
Even if it’s not far.
Even if it’s just to the next town over, or the next friend’s couch.
Find the place where your name is enough.
Where you don’t have to be a statement.
Where you’re not reduced to your resistance.

Find your Berlin.
And then bring it back with you.
Wear it like a soft hoodie.
Speak it in the way you order your coffee.
Live it in the way you look people in the eyes when you say:

“Hi. I’m not here to explain. I’m here to exist.”
Just me.
Just Ryan.

Around the World: Bryce’s Story

4 June, 20254 June, 2025Leave a comment

Let me take you back.

I was 18. That magical age where you think you’ve got it all figured out, but you still call your mom when your laundry turns pink. I had just hit that point in life where everything in my hometown felt too small. The streets, the routines, the same familiar faces. It was all closing in on me.
I needed space. Air. Maybe even some chaos. So, I packed up my car—if you could call it that. It was more of a metal box with an engine and a slight identity crisis. No GPS, no credit card, barely any cash, but a lot of heart.
I didn’t even tell many people I was leaving. I just drove west and decided I’d figure it out on the way.

When I got to Vancouver, I had exactly zero plans. Zero housing. Zero resources. But I had arrived, and that felt like… something?
I found myself driving around Stanley Park. I’d never seen anything like it. There were trees that made my little car look like a toy. Water that sparkled like it was auditioning for a movie. And people, jogging like they actually enjoyed it.
I parked and sat in silence for a bit, pretending this was all part of some Eat, Pray, Love moment. In reality, I was stalling because I had nowhere else to go.
That night, I curled up in the driver’s seat, hoodie rolled up as a pillow, trying to convince myself it was an adventure. The air was damp. The windows fogged up. But hey, I was free… right?

By morning, my back felt like it had aged 50 years, but I was still in one piece. I took that as a win. I stretched out, rubbed my eyes, looked out across the park and said, “Okay, day one in the big city—let’s do this.”
I drove into downtown. The city was buzzing: there were bikes, buses, beeping horns, neon signs. And somehow, every single person seemed like they had somewhere important to be.
Except for me, that is. But I didn’t want to look like an outsider, so I did what any self-respecting newcomer would do: I pretended. I adjusted my sunglasses. I leaned back like I knew where I was going. I even nodded at the people on the street, like I was one of them.

And then I saw it: a street that looked like it led somewhere cool. Brick buildings, people walking dogs, some artsy-looking cafés. Perfect. So I went for it.
Left-hand turn. No big deal.
Except, within seconds, I realized… big deal.
Because coming directly toward me, fast, was a silver Audi R8.
I froze. Like, full-body, “brain not working,” kind of frozen.

There are moments in life where time slows down. Where everything gets very clear, very fast. This was one of those moments.
I could see the grill of that car. The expression on the driver’s face (equal parts confusion and rage). And even the little sunglasses dangling from his rearview mirror. That man had money—and zero patience for a kid in a $2,000 car, going the wrong way.
I heard honking, shouting. I saw people on the sidewalk point at me like I was some kind of public safety demonstration. One guy just shook his head, like I’d personally disappointed him.

I did what my instincts told me to do: I cranked the wheel and swerved into the nearest side street—right past a massive green dumpster.
Parked—slammed my car into park. And just sat there.
I was shaking. My face was hot. I felt like I’d just survived an extreme sport, except the only thing I’d done was make a left turn.

And then the thoughts came, one by one, loud and clear:
Did I actually just do that?
Am I still alive?
Is it too late to move back home?

I slumped down in my seat, like hiding would help. I was parked beside literal garbage, and somehow it still felt like a step up from what had just happened.
I remember looking around to make sure no one had followed me; as if the Audi guy was going to chase me down, and hand me a bill for emotional damages.

Eventually, the adrenaline wore off, and something strange happened: I started laughing. Like, really laughing. The kind of laugh that starts as a nervous giggle and then snowballs until your stomach hurts. Because in the grand scheme of things… it was kind of hilarious.
I had survived my first real Vancouver experience. Not a sunset on the seawall. Not a cozy coffee shop moment. But a full-blown, wrong-way-down-a-one-way-street near-death experience.

Over time, I got better. I learned the roads. I found a place to live. I even got a credit card—with a limit so low, it was more symbolic than useful, but still. I figured it out. But I’ll never forget that feeling—of being completely out of place, completely lost. And somehow still okay.

And that, my friends, is how I learned about one-way streets.
Not from a sign. Not from a city tour. Not even from Google Maps.
No, I learned about one-way streets the old-fashioned way:
With fear. With adrenaline.
And with a luxury car speeding directly at my face.

Around the World: Paulina’s Story

2 June, 20254 June, 2025Leave a comment

Mis raíces son de aquí y de allá.
My roots are from here and there.
But not literally here. By “here,” I mean Mexico—that’s where my “here” stayed.

Me and my family come from a long line of immigrants who arrived from northern Spain and Italy, eventually mixing with Indigenous people and mestizxs in Mexico. And no, I didn’t spit into a tube for Google to find this out.
I know, because where I come from, that kind of knowledge is passed down, close to the heart. Being of European descent still carries a kind of social value—less weight, more pride—even if it was five or seven generations ago.

Having that said, my gay genes are from all over the world!!
I only dare say genes because science hasn’t settled on it—it’s a mix of hormonal, genetic, and environmental factors. And I plan to tell my family that. So they can start taking responsibility for some of the emotional baggage they’ve passed down.

Yes, I’m from Mexico—from a city surrounded by three volcanoes.
Since I was little, my horizon has always been populated. It was hard to pick a favourite volcano, so I just decided to love them all. Which… maybe explains a lot.
I’m pansexual. And my volcano city was named Puebla by colonizers. Puebla doesn’t mean anything, but it sounds close to Pueblo—”town” in Spanish—just sapphic.

The city is colourful, artsy, painfully colonial. The population is mixed—Indigenous communities that still hold on to language and tradition, and whitexicans who think they’re more European than they actually are. There’s pride in food (rightfully so—don’t @ me!), but the snobbery doesn’t come from that. It comes from whiteness and class.
And even though we are all mixed, with Asian, Indigenous, European, black, over and over again, mestizaje didn’t mean equality. Now, Indigenous communities are a little better preserved, but that’s only because they have been pushed out to the peripheries—margins of the capital city.
In Puebla, waves of immigrants were welcomed: Lebanese people escaping the Ottoman Empire, Spaniards fleeing civil war, Germans leaving post-Nazi trauma behind. These communities were—and still are—respected, owning businesses, having their own schools, social clubs, factories. And indeed, in private schools in Puebla, you’re taught German, English, and French.
But not Nahuatl. Not Otomí.

Close to my hometown is a valley called Cholollan—renamed Cholula. Please, add it to your bucket list. This city was once a spiritual hub for many Indigenous communities, all praising different deities, but gathered in the same land.
Not only pan, but poly.
The first time I lived alone was in Cholula. Mi Cholu. Colourful, bike town, full of markets and fields of flowers, maiz, and so many fireworks, like crazy, every single day there’s a saint’s celebration. Because colonialism ensured Catholicism wasn’t just adopted in Mexico — it was absorbed, so now there aren’t temples — called calpullis— for different deities; now they are churches.
Puebla and Cholula are only 20 minutes apart: the whitewashed “we’re still European” city, and the cempasúchil lands that bloom every September.

I never really felt the need to come out to my family. I’d already come out as “the artist,” the cycle-breaker, the one who says no más to abuse and misogyny.
And as JuanGa said—and if you don’t know who Juan Gabriel is, how are you even here? Juan Gabriel was our Mexican Elton John, but gayer and way more legendary. He, maybe they, said “What is obvious doesn’t need to be asked”

I don’t know if I had any queer relatives, I never saw anyone in my family that could have been.
What I did see were women who got shit done and men who “worked all day” but had mini-golf in their offices and collectible toys in their meeting rooms.
The women had strong hands that braided my hair so tightly it would probably qualify as child abuse today. But then they’d hand me a tortilla con aguacate y sal before dinner, and my favourite agua fresca—papaya…
Maybe they knew I was queer before I did.

But don’t get me wrong—I’ve known for a while. I just did gay stuff before I said I was gay. Like kissing my girlfriends at parties (with consent, always). I also shared my first orgasm with a girl.
It’s funny how we think we have “first times,” and then someone reminds us: “Didn’t that happen… back in the day?”
I thought my first time having sex was with my middle school boyfriend—he told everyone. I didn’t even come. Double asshole.
Later in life, I wanted to leave Mexico, but my Saturn return aligned with the pandemic, and I ended up living in San Francisco. There one day, I was with friends and playing Never Have I Ever, and someone said, “Never had sex with a woman.”
I didn’t put a finger down. But a friend said, “Wait—you told me a story from when you were 13.”
And I said, “We didn’t have sex. We just touched each other… and came.”
(Everyone laughed. I didn’t.)
It took my poly, demi, pan, ADD, PTSD brain a hot minute, but I finally connected the dots… My first time had been with a girl. YAY!!!!!!

By 28, I started calling myself bi. I didn’t need to come out dramatically. I just accepted it, named it, and started dating a woman.
We met on an app—because, of course. It was late 2020. She was beautiful—blue eyes, ballerina body, smile that could heal your inner child. It was sweet and short. I had to return to the U.S. We still orbit each other’s socials. A win.
Especially since my relationships with men tend to end with full drama:
The “never speak to me again” kind… or worse.

In 2021, I finally moved to Vancouver.
Why did I leave Mexico in the first place? Because I was afraid. Afraid to walk free. To wear something tight. To show my breasts.
I had experienced too much violence. Misogyny lived too comfortably in my home, in the media, in our streets. So I leapt. I trusted myself—and my craft as an artist.
Living outside of Mexico gave me perspective.
In Mexico, I’m not considered a person of colour. I had white privilege—despite my mom calling me the N-word for being “the darkest one.”
But here? I’m not white. I’m brown. More than anyone in my family would ever admit. And I embrace it.

I have an accent. YES.
I wear colours. YES.
I cook amazingly. I dance badly. I sing, not so bad.
I’m loud. My eyebrows speak before I do.

At a staff party for an immersive theatre company I worked at, I realized I was the only non-Canadian, non-white person there. We were drinking, joking, talking about patriarchy (as you do). Then this guy—let’s call him Hunter, because that’s his name—says: “You’re not like the other girls. You’ve got Big Dick Energy.”
I was like… “WHAT?”
And the guys were nodding. “Yeah, like you’re confident, you speak your mind…” One added, “All the women at work are into you. It’s like they see the big dick.”
Then someone else chimed in: “Or maybe… they’re into her because she doesn’t have a dick at all—but treats them as if she did.”
I didn’t know what to do with that info. Still don’t.
But I did find out later, at a New Year’s party, that they weren’t wrong. I made a move on one of the women—she said yes… until she didn’t. She ghosted me when I got COVID. Then asked me out again. So… not a total loss. Not a total win, either.

As I’ve grown, I’ve realized I don’t just love femme femmes or masc boys.
I love people across the spectrum. Masc femmes, femme boys. I love trans folks. I love queers. I love sapphics. I love love—as long as they’re not assholes or racist.
And the biggest victory, I love me. All my spectrum. All my mixed, from all around, magical self.
Even my lows. ‘Cause nobody gets depressed like I do. And most certainly nobody binges peanut butter at midnight like I do. And if someone does, I hope we can be friends.

My hope here is that younger people out there get to see more of us queers. Because we are not going anywhere, and they don’t have to wait 28 years to name themselves.
You don’t need to come out perfectly formed.
Just come out… as you.

Around the World: Andi’s Story

28 May, 20257 June, 2025Leave a comment

I was 29 when I took my first trip to Europe. I had been dreaming of going to the Netherlands ever since I could remember; I even wrote in my departing words in my high school year book that you’d find me one day living in a big Dutch windmill! There was just something about the Netherlands I seemed to be drawn to: a place where cultural traditions remained, but attitudes and ideas seemed progressive. And the vibe! Who doesn’t love the idea of casually cycling through narrow streets over canals, with a basket full of tulips and a cheese wheel?!
And, of course, (and before it was a thing here) the novelty of legally ingesting pot brownies was something I had to try! I had a whole dream in my mind, and I was determined to live it, even if for only a couple days!

It was June and my partner and I had agreed that our first trip together we would spend most of our time in the UK where she had family, as long as I could get in a few days in the capital city of the Netherlands.

After arriving in Schiphol, we took a very long and hot bus ride to the city centrum where I had booked a hotel with the title of ‘art gallery’ in it’s name, and across from the famous Rijksmuseum. After figuring out which entrance to use, we stood in the doorway of what looked like a doctor’s office with a woman sitting at a desk in an actual closet under the stairs. I asked if this was the hotel, and she responded yes and proceeded to check us in.

“Here is your key, you must return it each time you leave the building.”

This was new to me, and after asking and having her explain in a vague but rather direct manner, I accepted the policy, and we continued to our room.

We walked a whole 10 feet to a door in a narrow hallway that was in direct eyesight of the hotel entrance. I was having a hard time picturing where the courtyard could be, given that the room we booked would have a window facing it.

*The door opens*

We were presented with a small, office-sized room with two tiny single beds pushed together to make up the “queen-sized” bed I had expected to see. There was a TV the size of an iPad hanging from the wall above a square leather stool in desperate need of a wash and a stitch job. The floor was laminate tiling with several damaged and half-missing pieces. The closed curtains were stained with old cigarette holes burned through.
Did we at least get a view?.… No. I opened the drapes to find a wall about 5-feet across from our window. I looked down to see an empty bucket, a boot, and a rope on a cement floor. Above was the sky framed by a small rectangle. This was the “courtyard.” But wait! The bathroom! Was it just as terrible? Surprisingly, no, but I had some questions. Why was it almost as big as the room itself? Why did the floor sink into a drain in the centre of the room, away from the shower? Why was the mirror higher than I could see myself? Why was there only one towel!

Feeling rather disappointed, we decided to not let it get us down and go out to experience a world I had waited so long to see.

“You are in the bike lane!“
“Oh! Sorry!”

We were hungry, so we decided to find a nice restaurant nearby. We ended up settling for a moderately busy patio restaurant that had a band preparing for some live music. We ordered, we ate, the food was great, and so was the beer. We were refreshed and ready to start over. 25-minutes after finishing, there was no wait staff in sight. 45 minutes pass…

“I think we should just go up and pay?”

We approached a man behind a menu counter.

“Hi there, we would like to pay.”
“I am not your server”
“Okay, can you please find our server.”
“No, she is somewhere up there, serving other guests.” As he gestured up the stairs.
“Okay, but we need to leave and have been waiting quite some time.”
“Here.” He put the debit machine in front of us.
“Where is the tip option?”
“We don’t have one.” He said, with mild disdain.

We paid, and tried to thank him, but he seemed too frustrated to acknowledge us any further. Back to stage one. This type of interaction would not be the last of our evening, or trip.

Once again, we were feeling disappointed. But I knew of one more thing we could do to turn our perceptions around.

“Wanna go get a pot brownie?”
“Sure!”

We found a coffee shop, and knowing that we would both have a very low tolerance for THC, we purchased a single “space cake” and headed back to the room.
We were exhausted after a long day of travel and navigating a new city. We decided to stay in for the remainder of the evening with our small TV and space cake. We halved it and I nibbled on pieces while trying to find a channel to watch. I recall looking over at my partner and gasping:

“Did you eat the whole thing already?!”
“Yes?… Is that bad?”

About an hour passed, and I felt nothing, but at least the show was interesting. It was a talk show about… Then it hit me. I had been watching the entire show in Dutch. I do not speak Dutch. The instant realization that I was high out of my mind threw me into a state of panic. I needed something to soothe my pounding heart. I began stroking the cool wall beside the bed. Helen looked over at me and asked:

“Are you okay?”
I slowly turned my head.
“I’m so high right now…”
“Omg, your eyes are red!”
“I’m kinda freaking out, do you have a drink on you?”
“No, but they have cups and water in the common area.”
“You mean I gotta go out there?!”

Indeed, I had to, and as I slowly blazed my way out of the room to get a cup of water from the common area, I overheard a couple at the check-in closet, asking why they, too, needed to return their keys.

Keys… Return keys… Locked… Locked in.

All of a sudden, I had an epiphany.
Why was there a huge bathroom with a drain in the middle of the floor? To take our organs, of course!!!

As I went back to bed, I began fixating about all the blunt conversations had throughout the day, and wondering ‘why is everyone so mad at me?!‘

It wasn’t until the next morning, after the longest and most paranoid night of my life, that I decided to do some reading online about interacting with the Dutch. As many know, the Dutch are notoriously known for being very blunt and, of course, Canadians are known for their politeness and friendly demeanour in conversation (mostly). It turns out, that many Dutch folks may find over-politeness as insincere.

I also learned that tipping can be considered insulting in a country where service industry jobs are generally paid a living wage.

With this new-found knowledge, we were able to turn things around and enjoy the remainder of our time in the city.

Since this trip, I’ve been to many other countries. I’ve learned to do a bit more reading up on places instead of relying on my own romanticized ideas. And although I’ve been to some pretty wild places, Amsterdam still goes down as the biggest culture shock of my life.