This Is Why I Shouldn’t Try to Help Tourists

As I walked down one of Amsterdam’s canal streets during my lunch break I was stopped by a familiar question.

“Excuse me. Can you help us?”

I’d already spotted them as I approached the corner and knew the question was coming. They were an older couple but they were still recognizable as tourists. They had the confused look of people seeking information mixed with the concern that anyone they asked might not speak their language. Plus they had a map.

Their age and gray hair didn’t make them seem like the typical kind of Amsterdam tourists, seeking coffee shops and/or the sights of the Red Light District but you can never be sure. From the man’s accent I could instantly tell they were English, from somewhere a little farther North than where I grew up (London).

Whenever a tourist asks me for assistance I always get a small feeling of pride that they have chosen me. It makes me feel that out of all the people in Amsterdam I must have looked the most knowledgeable and able to help. In reality I know it is a random choice made out of desperation but I still like to take it as a compliment anyway.

“Yes I can,” I replied.

“Could you tell us where we are?” he asked, indicating the map.

“Sure,” I replied, basically repeating myself.

I studied the map for a moment, looking for our position. This should be easy I thought to myself. I’ve lived and worked in Amsterdam for a long time. I am quite familiar with it. I’ve navigated it many times on foot and by bike. Sure, it has a bit of a weird layout, like a spider got drunk and built half a web, but that’s part of what makes it such an easily recognizable city. Plus we were on a street I walked every day. It should be easy to find. So why couldn’t I find it?

I started to become painfully aware that it was already taking me longer than it should to fulfill my promise. I think it must have been because the man was holding the map in a different orientation to how the city was laid out in front of us. It was throwing off my brains ability to narrow down where we were standing on the 2-D representation.

For a moment I was tempted to grab both his hands and rotate them so the map and city matched. However, since that would have probably been rude (and definitely weird) I tilted my head to one side instead. I’m not sure if it actually helped. It definitely earned me an odd look from the wife who’d probably started to wonder if they had asked a knowledgeable local for directions or an escaped mental patient.

I decided the head tilting was definitely not helping. If anything it only increased the pressure I was feeling about how long it was taking for me to find a familiar street on a map.

Suddenly I couldn’t tell one canal from another. In a moment of panic I pointed to one that could have been the correct canal but could also have been one on the other side of the city (in reality it was probably somewhere in-between).

The couple exchanged a glance as if they had serious doubts about my answer too (which would not have been surprising since I’ve had tourists refuse to believe my directions before).

“Maybe you can tell us how to get to the Zoo from here?” the man asked instead, as if hoping a different approach to the problem would help… It didn’t really.

“Yes. I can,” I happily replied and launched into a very complex set of directions, probably made even more confusing by the weird hand gestures I started using as a visual aid.

“You go over that bridge,” I pointed to the nearby Amstel bridge (why didn’t I just look for that on the map), “then follow the road until you come to a big junction.” I did a weird kind of forward arching point with my hand to indicate the junction was on the other side of the bridge and definitely not before it or on it.

“Then turn right,” I did a hook point right as if the distant road I was pointing to was somehow visible and I was reaching down it, “Keep walking that way for a while and you’ll eventually find the zoo on your left.” I do not know why but I did a sort of ta-da gesture with my hands, maybe because I could not think of a hand gesture for zoo.

Possibly looking more confused than when we had started talking the couple exchanged one last glance, thanked me and started to walk towards the bridge, all the while keeping a firm grip of their map.

As they left I realized that I like helping tourists… I just hate giving them directions. It seems like that should be a strange contradiction but I think it makes sense. Whenever I try to help them by providing directions I don’t actually end up helping them at all.

A short while later I also realized that I had given them the wrong directions. As if that was not bad enough they were also needlessly complex too. My bridge, junction, right, left directions could have been more easily and accurately communicated as, “Do you see those tram lines there? Follow those.”

I wonder if they ever found the zoo.