Three things help before you land: know your accommodation address, know one café within five minutes of it, and download the city's map for offline use. Everything else is either noise or can wait until you're there.

The Planning That Actually Helps

Your accommodation address. Write it down somewhere accessible without signal. You will use this to show a taxi driver, to orient yourself when you land, and to find your way back when you're disoriented. It's the simplest possible anchor and it matters more than any amount of pre-reading.

One nearby café. Not a list. One. Find it on the map, note the name, and plan to go there tomorrow morning. This is not a research exercise. It's the thing you do on day one that starts to make the city feel manageable.

Offline maps. Google Maps and Maps.me both allow you to download city maps before you travel. Do this at home, on wifi, before you get on the plane. A downloaded map that works without data is the single most useful piece of travel infrastructure you can have. It removes the situation where you're lost, out of signal, and staring at a blank screen.

The Planning That Doesn't Help

Reading every negative review of your hotel the night before you fly. Spending two hours reading about the city's safety record. Making contingency plans for scenarios that have a 1% chance of happening. All of this produces more anxiety, not less, because it focuses attention on risks rather than on the experience you're about to have.

The city is almost certainly fine. The hotel is almost certainly fine. The reviews that worried you were written by people having an unusually bad day.

The First-Morning Walk as the Anxiety Reset

Get outside within twenty minutes of waking up on day one. Walk for thirty minutes with no destination. No sights, no list, no schedule. Just walk and look. The city transitions from abstract and threatening to concrete and navigable faster than you expect.

The coffee you have somewhere you found by walking is better than the coffee you researched. Not because the coffee is better, but because finding it yourself is the first evidence that you can function in this place.

Disorientation Becomes Familiarity Faster Than You Expect

The feeling of being slightly lost in a new city is unpleasant for about two hours. After that, you start to recognise streets. After a day, you have landmarks. After two days, you're navigating without thinking. The trajectory from anxious to comfortable is much faster than people expect when they're in the anxious stage.

When to Ask for Help and Who to Ask

Ask the person behind the desk at your accommodation for anything local. They are an expert resource and they answer the same questions daily. Ask other tourists for directions only if there are no locals available. Ask locals when you need restaurant recommendations, the answer will always be better.