17/05/2026
I get nunu of the day award 😅
I arrived at Amsterdam Centraal with the calm confidence of someone who had everything under control.
Ticket checked. Bags sorted. Timing perfect.
Except my train was not leaving from Centraal at all. It was leaving from Schiphol Airport, the very station I had passed through thirty minutes earlier without a second thought.
There is a particular kind of panic that arrives when you realise your certainty was built on assumption rather than attention. I had read the ticket once. Then twice. Then three times over the weekend. Yet my brain only saw what it expected to see. I arrived at Centraal so that’s where I expected to leave from.
Amsterdam. Train. Paris. Done.
And yet there it was, in the almost final moment. Amsterdam Schiphol.
By some combination of fast trains and mild adrenaline, I made it.
What else am I not truly seeing because I have already decided what to expect?
Confirmation bias is a psychological term. But sometimes it simply looks like standing, confidently, in the wrong station.
Thankfully, life occasionally gives us a second train. 😮💨 😅