Welcome to Mennonite Heritage Tours!
Mennonite Heritage Tours is a Dutch Mennonite travel organization, specialized in faith-based tours focussing on the Mennonite-Anabaptist heritage in Europe.
New for 2018 is a cooperation between Mennonite Heritage Tours and Tourmagination, The North American based Mennonite tour operator. Tours number 1 and 3 will be organized together with Tourmagination and can be booked through Tourmagination.
Philosophy
The philosophy of Mennonite Heritage Tours is to travel around in small tour groups (2-16 participants) to encourage meaningful relationships between participants and to be flexible to customize the tour itinerary to special wishes of participants, e.g. to visit places related to your ancestors.
Your Host
Your host and tour guide on all tours is Ayold Fanoy, a Mennonite theologian from The Netherlands. Ayold is a trained tour guide. He has led over 20 Mennonite-Anabaptist tours in the recent years.
Tours for Summer 2019
Tours for Summer 2018
- Holland and Belgium Tour with the Keukenhof (Tulips, daffodils and many more bulb flowers), April 23 - May 4 2018, 12 days. Springtime is the season when the Dutch bulb flowers are at its best. All colors of the rainbow can be seen at the Keukenhof, the Dutch bulb flower exhibition center. We visit the blossoming Dutch bulb fields, combined with many sites of Mennonite interest. This Tour gives you an overall knowledge of the Mennonite beginnings in Holland and Belgium with visits of Menno Simons' place of birth in Pingjum and his monument in Witmarsum, Friesland. Other features of this tour are the great historical cities of Amsterdam, Haarlem, Bruges and Ghent.English spoken tour in cooperation with Tourmagination. Read more...
- Germany and France, MERK, May 5-14 2018, 9 days. Dutch spoken tour in cooperation with the Dutch Mennonite Church to the European Mennonite Conference in Montbéliard, France.. We will visit Mennonite and other sites in the Palatinate, Elsace, Swiss Jura and France. Read more...
- Holland, Germany and Switzerland - The Grand Tour of Mennonitism and Anabaptism, June 26-July 11 2018, 16 days. English spoken tour in cooperation with Tourmagination. This tour has a strong focus on the 16th century origin and early history of the Anabaptist and Mennonite movement in Germany, Switzerland and The Netherlands. The cities of Strasbourg, Bern, Zürich, Münster and Amsterdam will be visited. A homestay in Detmold with Mennonites from the former Soviet Union will bring you new friendships. The free day in the Swiss Alps will be a highlight of the tour. Read more...
- Ukraine, September 4-14 2018. We extensively tour the former colonies of the Chortitza and Molotschna and that will show us the more recent Mennonite History in Ukraine from around 1780 till 1945. We start with two days sightseeing in Kyiv before going east to Dnjepropetrovsk and Zaporozhye. Visits to social Mennonite Aid Projects by MCC and Mennonite Brethern Canada are included. English spoken tour. Read more...
Departure Point and Flights
Starting point of all Tours is Europe, for example Amsterdam, Frankfurt or Berlin, depending on the tour. This means that you have to book your own flight from the United States or Canada to Europe and back. And since you book your own flight you are free to extend your stay in Europe to visit long-time-no-see-relatives or cities you always wanted to explore!
The price of a return ticket from America or Canada to Europe costs about $750-1500, depending on how far in advance you make your booking.
There are many websites to help you booking your flight through the internet (see below). But always check your Travel Agent as well. Sometimes they can offer you a flight at the same price or lower as the booking sites do.
- www.expedia.com
- www.orbitz.com
- www.travelocity.com
- www.travelocity.ca
- www.kayak.com. This booking site compares hundreds of travel sites.
Some tours have a different departure and finishing point, so you possibly need two different flights instead of one round trip. Booking websites offer this service by choosing 'multiple destinations' or 'multy city' instead of 'round trip'. If you need assistance booking your flight, please contact Ayold Fanoy at infdAgTo@mennoniteheritagetour1KNzs.eu. He would be happy to assist you.
Visas and Passports
US and Canadian citizens do not need visas to visit The Netherlands, Germany, Poland, France, Switzerland or Ukraine, if you stay not longer then 90 days. Passports should be valid for at least another four months from the planned date of departure of these countries.
Hotels
Lodging in middle class tourist hotels, always comfortable bedrooms with own bathroom. The hotels are as much as possible located in the city center. This gives you the opportunity to spend your evenings in some of the most beautiful cities of Europe.
Transportation
For our Tour transport we use an air-conditioned 9 person Passenger Van.