Adventure is a State of Mind
Many people enjoy exploring their family history. Traveling to the places where your grandparents or great-grandparents or even earlier ancestors were born is a great way to connect with your family heritage. But how do you do this when you can’t find a tour that matches your genetics? This is one of the benefits of independent travel!
Genealogy
Genealogy has inspired travel for decades. I’m sure you’ve taken a trip or know someone who has taken a trip, whether it’s to a different state or a different country, because they want to learn more about their heritage.
This is great, and there’s something truly special about walking on land you know your ancestors walked on or eating foods similar to what your ancestors ate.
Sometimes all we know is the country, or maybe only a region, where our ancestors originated. This is frequently the case when we’re trying to explore our ancestry based on a genetic test. Sometimes we’re lucky enough to have a detailed family tree that provides us with the specific town or city, or even a plot of land or castle, which our ancestors called home.
If you only know the country of origin for your family, or if your family hailed from a large city or location that is now a popular tourist destination, you can easily find a guided tour to that area. And sometimes tours are the way to go.
Many of our ancestors, however, came from small, out-of-the way places. In those cases, planning your own individualized travel adventure is the best, and maybe only, way to explore your roots!
Location, Location, Location
Group tours, by nature, hit the highlights of a country or region. Sometimes there’s a theme, such as a wine-tasting tour or a biking tour, but those itineraries will still highlight only certain places or activities. Obviously, it’s impossible to do and see everything in one trip, or even multiple trips! The tour companies prioritize what they think is interesting and important. That’s great… until you have different priorities from the tour organizers.
My husband, Greg, and I enjoy traveling as a way to learn more about our families. But if we weren’t willing to plan our own travel adventures, we would have missed out on a lot of family history.
For example, Greg’s maternal grandmother was from Paleohori (Παλιοχορι), Greece. You haven’t heard of it? I’m not surprised. It’s a small village in the mountains, several miles from the town of Leonidio, which sits on the coast. (If you’re interested, you can probably find Leonidio on a map, but not always Paleochori.)
I’m sure you won’t be surprised by this, but no group tours go to Paleochori. Not a single one! You’ll find some tours including towns with similar names, but not to the town where Greg’s grandmother grew up.
The same is true for the small village of Athenion (Αθηνιον), Greece, where Greg’s paternal great-grandfather was born. No tours.
And I’m sure it’s the same for hundreds of other small towns where your grandparents and great-grandparents were born. If you want to visit, you’re not going to be able to do so by joining a tour group.
The Joy of Independence
This is where planning your own, individualized travel adventure comes in. When you plan the trip yourself, you create the itinerary. That means you can choose to visit places most people have never heard of, and you can spend as much time in those places as you want, rather than having someone else determine your schedule.
Greg and I visited both Paleochori and Athenion in Greece. We’ve also visited places associated with my family history. Years ago while visiting Germany with my parents, we visited cemeteries in Diepholz and Deckau, an area where my dad’s great-great-grandfather came from. We even found graves with the family name “Döbbeling,” likely distant relatives of my “Doebbeling” family members.
Whether it’s visiting towns and cemeteries or spending time researching historical records, if you are planning your travel itinerary, you can allocate yourself as much time as you want for those activities. And you often have more flexibility in case your plans change – for example, if once you’re in the area your research shows you that most of your family actually came from a village a few miles away from the one you are visiting, you can visit that village as well.
Spontaneity
Many people have had the experience of a spontaneous encounter during their travel adventure, and often these experiences end up being a highlight of the entire trip. Whether it’s talking with a local who shares stories about the area you can’t find in any guidebook, or it’s actually meeting someone who shares your last name or genetics, these are special moments you can’t plan. They’re also more likely to occur if you’re not rushing to get back on the bus with the rest of the tour group.
Independent travel allows you to travel off the beaten path, which gives you more opportunities to interact with the locals. And if a major goal of your trip is to learn more about your heritage, your odds of having a magical, spontaneous experience increase significantly.
This happened to us when we were traveling in Greece. When we visited Athenion, armed with an old photo of a house and a piece of paper with Greg’s family name written out in Greek letters, we not only met some of his distant cousins but were invited to share a meal with them!
We leave something of ourselves behind when we leave a place, we stay there, even though we go away. And there are things in us that we can find again only by going back there.
Pascal Mercier
Planning the Right Type of Trip for You
Have I convinced you that the best way to search for your roots is through planning your own travel adventure rather than taking a large group tour? I hope so! And if what’s keeping you from doing so is the fact that you haven’t done so before, this website has lots of information about everything from deciding where to go and when to go to choosing your travel companions and overcoming a fear of flying.
If you aren’t yet comfortable making your own travel arrangements and you’re seeking to learn more about the general area or country your ancestors came from, a tour might be a workable option for you. For example, if your DNA test results indicate you are mostly English, Scottish, and Irish, a tour of the British Isles might be a good option, so long as you don’t want to visit the tiny seaside village your great-grandmother was born in.
If you want to visit specific locations that aren’t included on most general tours but prefer someone else do the planning, there are some tour companies which specialize in creating genealogy-based tours. They operate much like solo tour companies in that you pick the places you want to visit and they create the itinerary and make the travel arrangements. These will be the most expensive travel options, however, given the individualized planning as well as having fewer fellow travelers with whom to share the cost of a tour guide.
Specific Considerations
Regardless of whether you are traveling independently or with a group, there are some additional considerations and planning related to learning more about your family and heritage. These include:
- Deciding what you want to learn. Are you wanting to learn more about the clothes your ancestors might have worn and the foods they might have eaten? Or are you looking for baptism records to document when your grandfather was born and who his parents were? Obviously, you’re going to spend your time very differently based on different types of goals.
- Doing some research beforehand. Growing up, my husband knew his family emigrated from the Peloponnese area of Greece but not the specific towns. Had we gone to Greece with only that knowledge, it would have been similar to someone knowing their family was from the state of Ohio or “the Midwest” but not much more. We could have gotten a sense of the culture and food, but our odds of learning anything specific about his family would have been slim-to-none. Knowing the villages some of his ancestors were from gave us an opportunity to specifically visit those areas, and luckily for us, to meet some of his relatives.
- Allowing yourself more unscheduled time during a genealogical trip than you might during other vacations. Some of this time is to avoid frustrations – if you’re visiting a local courthouse or church and come across family-related documents, you’re not going to want to stop after 15 minutes because that’s what you originally planned. It’s also important to give yourself time to process what you’re learning. Meeting a relative or seeing a grave can be a very emotional experience. This is especially true for individuals with tragedies in their past, such as learning more about family members who were killed during the Holocaust or who were forced to emigrate as slaves.
- Considering issues related to language. Under most travel conditions, knowing just a few words of the local language and using a lot of pointing and sign language is enough to get by. If you’re seeking out specific places or information, however, it’s more crucial that you have a plan to translate any language in which you are not fluent. This could involve hiring a translator or using the Google Translate app on your phone. What is important is that you think about this beforehand and be prepared.
- Making contact beforehand, if possible. Before visiting Paleochori, Greg made contact with some distant cousins in Athens who kindly offered to meet us in the village and show us around, including taking us to the house where Greg’s great-grandfather had lived. Even if you don’t have access to living relatives, there are often internet forums and Facebook groups which focus on family groups or regions of family origin. It’s difficult to find Paleochori on the map, but there is a Facebook group!
- Having a plan to record what you learn. Much of the time, our smartphones are all the equipment we need to document our travels – we can take photos and videos as well as audio recordings and use them to record notes. If this isn’t your preferred method of documentation, have a plan, such as bringing a journal and pens. Even if your phone is all you need, make sure to have a plan to keep your phone working at all times, such as having a power bank with you – you don’t want to visit your ancestral home and realize you can’t take a photo because your phone just died!
Traveling to Learn More About Our Heritage
Almost any travel can bring history alive for us, but the experience can be even more powerful when we’re learning about a part of who we are. If you’re interested in learning more about your heritage and family background, hopefully you’ll consider planning your own unique trip to visit the places where your ancestors lived. That sounds like a true travel adventure to me!
Do you know where your ancestors originated? How can you learn more about your family history? Where are some family-related places you’d love to visit?
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