We are 4 women ages 93, 80, 69 & 62. We visited Europe in May of 2007, 16 years after our original trip to Europe. Our trip lasted 17 days, visiting 3 countries, 5 days each. We visited Slovakia, Poland and Germany. We are all daughters of immigrants. We have been doing family history for many years but decided we would try to visit not only the towns but to see inside every church connected with our family. We also intended to extend our knowledge of family connections by going to archives, town and city halls and Heimat museums.
We originally visited the website of the German National Tourist Office, found Dr. Wolfgang Grams’ name, and contacted him for information regarding family history personalized tours for the German portion of our trip. After corresponding with him, we engaged the services of his company Routes to Roots.
We contacted Dr. Grams and made arrangements to meet with our guide, Mr. Torsten Iversen, in Pasewalk Germany to begin our journey through our family history. We were specifically interested in Strasbury/Uckermark, the city of Prenzlau, the outdoor museum in Mecklenburg, near the city of Schwerin, the city of Hamburg and the town of Bergedorf just outside of Hamburg. We started our trip by visiting the church in Strasburg and the Heimat museum where our grandmother’s family was from. Torsten, our guide, arranged for us to meet the retired pastor of the church, Pastor Reidel, for a walking tour of the city.
The next day we visited Prenzlau to see the city archives for a look at the city directories and photos of houses at specific addresses as they were in the past. Lastly our guide, Torsten, took us to the city hall. Although we arrived on a day when the bureau of vital records was not open to the public he asked that since we had come such a long way, could we not speak to the person in charge. Permission was given and we met in her office. Torsten explained who we were and that we were looking for records regarding our family. We supplied the information that we had (the names of our grandparents) and asked her to try to find their marriage record. She was not able to locate the record. Then our guide asked her to check for birth records and she found 7 birth records from 1890 through 1896 as well as the corresponding death records. After checking with the clerk at city hall in Strasburg, she was also able to locate the marriage record we were looking for. That record not only gave us the name of our grandfather’s parents but also where to look for additional information regarding his family. The kindness of the lady in the vital records office in taking the time to see us and to look for our records is something that we will remember for a long time.
We saw the church where our grandparents were married in Prenzlau as well as some streets where they might have lived. As our guide, Torsten, not only showed us the church and the town but he also took the time when we returned to the hotel to translate part of the records that same evening and night (until 3 a.m.!) so if we had additional questions at that time he would be able to answer some of those questions. He stated at that time he never has had clients who found so many records at one time. We found 15 records in total from the city hall, 5 records in the archive. He also is/was in contact with the church archivist in Strasburg on our behalf and has received 7 different records regarding our grandmother’s family.
Mecklenburg’s outdoor museum and the city tour of Hamburg shows us both sides of our heritage as our family emigrated from Stettin, a big city, but came from smaller places in earlier times. In addition, Hamburg was the port from which they travel to America.
We enjoyed our stay in Germany; our guide Torsten was terrific. We would recommend his services to anyone. He is interest in showing you Germany and in helping you fulfill your hopes and desires regarding your family history.
Everyone we met in Germany was extremely gracious and kind to us. This was the trip of a lifetime.
Olga, Maxine, Diane and Gertrude