When discussing vacations, the phrase “safety first” may not immediately spring to mind. But why shouldn’t it? Before one can fully enjoy a trip, a sense of safety has to first be felt by the traveller. A Singapore female student, known as Chri5tie on TikTok, was travelling in Europe and had varying experiences with regard to how safe she felt in different countries.
Last December, this Singapore female student rated these countries based on her experiences and shared them on TikTok.
The post has garnered over 215,000 views at the time of writing.
Chri5tie was in Europe for an extended period of time as she was in an overseas exchange programme in Poland.
Based on her 10/10 rating of its capital, Warsaw, she seemed to have enjoyed her time there.
“Special place in my heart,” she said when describing the city.
In all of her five months there, there were no racist encounters and she “felt pretty safe” walking home alone at night.
Unfortunately, the same can’t be said of the other cities she travelled to.
PHOTOS: Screengrab/TikTok/Chri5tie
Paris was a real downer for her, to the point where it scored 0/10 when it comes to safety.
It seemed like she was in hyper-alert mode, with hands fully inside her coat pockets “at all times” and being “on guard 24/7 for pickpockets”.
Unsurprisingly, her Paris trip was mentally exhausting.
Another city that got a thumbs down from the young Singaporean was Rotterdam, Netherlands.
She experienced her first and only racist encounter here.
Chri5tie was with her Asian friends when a group of teenagers walked past them.
“You guys need to wake up,” they yelled.
This is presumably in reference to the stereotype of Asians having slit eyes.
Thankfully, other locals were “pretty friendly” and Chri5tie shared a couple more cities where she had extremely positive experiences.
The list included Berlin, Bratislava, Interlaken and Seville.
AsiaOne has reached out to Chri5tie for more information.
In the comments section, a couple of netizens also touched on their negative experiences in the Netherlands.
“Oh my god, I didn’t enjoy the Netherlands at all too,” a TikTok user said.
PHOTO: Screengrab/TikTok/Chri5tie
A netizen was surprised at her high rating for Warsaw and cheekily asked if she had a Polish boyfriend.
In her response, Chri5tie didn’t mention anything about having a Polish boyfriend. Instead, she was with a female friend for three months there. She also stayed alone for six weeks.
The city of love didn’t receive much love at all from some netizens. Many agreed with Chri5tie that the city isn’t safe and would not recommend it to others.
PHOTOS: Screengrabs/TikTok/Chri5tie
However, there were a couple of TikTok users who had a very different experience when they were in Paris.
One mentioned they “had a great time in Paris” while another gave it a 10/10 rating.
From the video, it seems like Chri5tie managed to avoid any pickpocketing incidents during her stay in Europe.
These can be rather common among travellers. Just last month, a Singaporean family was targeted by pickpockets twice in 24 hours during their time in Athens.
The incident began right after they landed as they were being followed on public transport.
It reached a point where it was too dangerous for them to check in their Airbnb.
