Penzance (via Redruth) to Amsterdam by Annamaria Murphy

From Anna's notebook

January 2025

Anna is not only sharing a vivid account of her trip to Amsterdam but also some evocative sketches from her notebook. Anna is a Penwith based writer and friend who is currently touring with musicians Bagas de Gol in a show called 'Exiles' commissioned by PK Porthcurno, Museum of Global Communications and inspired by their archives.

Penzance to Amsterdam in Autumn 2024. 

Any of my foreign travels start with the train from Penzance. So any trip, even to Redruth, Truro, Bodmin Road, has a frisson. Out from the tunnel of Victorian arched glass at Penzance, with the immediate nearness of the ocean, where often times the waves salt the tracks and windows. Then this time onward to Bristol airport for a flight to Amsterdam. I wanted to do the whole thing by train, but my travelling companion and guide, Erwin, a Dutchman, was eager to get to his beloved city as soon as possible. 

Fair enough. But next time. 

The trains in Holland are often double decked! They seem to go everywhere. 

The train station takes you direct to the heart of the city. Straight into the boulevards with their leaning houses. A city built on marsh and tamed water. 

Where we are staying is right in the heart of the Red Light District. We are up seven flights of the tall, thin, former warehouse and level with the carved spires of the churches and pinnacles.

Tourists, of which I am of course one, pose with giant Edam cheeses on bridges. 

I smile daily at the window women in their pink cabinets of promised sex. One sees me writing in my notebook as I walk down her alley, and motions for me to show her, which I do. She then takes out a notebook from behind an orange curtain and shows me her writing and drawings. She’s Lithuanian I think, and beautiful, and of course. I’ll never know what she’s written but there is a moment of complicity in these streets where old religion, sex, stag dos, cheese,  bicycles, art and history jostle together. 

The Van Gogh Museum.

I am mostly rendered speechless here. To stand in front of Van Gogh’s paintings is something hard to describe, so I’m not going to try. 

One painting in particular moves me. It’s titled ‘The Garden of St. Paul’s Hospital’, and in amongst the leaning trees a figure walks, hunched in an enveloping coat. It’s probably Van Gogh himself, lost in this place, an asylum of sorts. It seems to me that the figure is finding some sort of solace in amongst the extraordinary colours of the woods.

In the museum shop, they sell sets of water pens in the colours of Van Gogh, so of course I buy I set.

Oude Kerk (Old Church)

One of Erwin’s old friends is Mateo, a world class organ player. He has the keys to Oude Kerk. One evening he takes us to the empty church and plays Bach on the 17th century organ there. The organ itself is bigger than my house. 

In this photo, I am looking up as the first notes are played, trying to find Mateo amongst the giant organ pipes. 

What a privilege to hear the beauty of this music played by a maestro.

But also, Erwin points out an old door, the handle of which Rembrandt himself would have lifted. I am drawn to the tombstone of Saskia, his wife, which lays flat on the floor of the church. It simply says ‘Saskia’ on it. How he loved her, and she how she must have loved him, marrying beneath her status to a poverty stricken artist. It is said he never recovered from her early death. 

Koffie. 

In the courtyard of the Oude Kerk, is the Cafe Koffie, which must have been a vestry for the windows and the carvings haven’t changed since Rembrandt’s time.

It’s the writers dream to sit in such a café , and wonder who else might have sat here over the centuries. It’s equally a dream to sit and watch from buses , boats and trains. 

Huge thanks to Anna especially for sharing how she uses her notebook sketches to remind her and to inspire. I am so grateful to all the guest writers as I haven't been far from home of late. Though I am plotting - with Anna!