The Unlikely Pilgrimage of Paul Schiernecker

This week, I was in Amsterdam. If the tax man asks, it was for research purposes.
In case you can’t read as far as my surname, I have Dutch heritage. There’s some German and some Ashkenazi Jew in there too but I’ve always felt connected to Holland.

My paternal grandfather was born there. He met my (English) grandmother when she was working as an au pair after WWII. They lived on a house boat in Amsterdam, had my uncle and then moved to Billericay, Essex when expecting my father.

I’m currently working on a novel set in Amsterdam in 1940. See tax man, research! As such, I wanted to visit the house where my great grandparents lived.
A distant Dutch cousin had shared a lot of family history with me that I would not otherwise have known about.
By the time I could take an active interest in my family, there were no first-party accounts. I don’t want to get too deep into it here but maybe that is why I write on the subjects I do. Family, war, history, faith – they’re reoccuring themes for a reason.
My dad and uncle remember visiting Amsterdam when they were young. It was boring to them as kids, everyone spoke Dutch. They even came up with their own bastardised version of the language that they spoke to one another. In fact, they still speak it – Happy Herkleklerk.

On a sunny Wednesday morn (which I didn’t know Amsterdam was capable of having visited in the winter months when I was a kid), I walked from the Hotel V to Jacob van Lennepkade, the registered address for my great grandparents, Hendrikus Lucas and Antonetta Wilhelmina Schiernecker. Strong names!

I’d looked it up online but standing in front of that building, with a slim frontage to avoid building regulation fees, I was desperate for connection. I wanted to knock, to see who lived there.
To explain who I was and why I was there.

Before that thought claimed me completely, I took a moment. Whatever is behind that door isn’t what once was.
It was enough to see it, to stand there, to think of what life would have looked like for Henk (as he was known) and Antonetta when they got married over one hundred years ago.
Once that had flowed through me, like practiced square breathing, I was on my way.

These ghosts might not have time for me, but I’ve got time for them.