Starting next summer—the year of celebration for Dutch Mennonites—Mennonite Heritage Tours will offer four new heritage tours for Mennonites from all over the world.
Mennonite Heritage Tours is based in the Netherlands and was founded by a Dutch Mennonite, Ayold Fanoy, a son of Dutch Reformed (Calvinist) parents who was baptized as a child. In his 20s, Fanoy joined the Dutch Mennonites, called the Doopsgezinden, having been attracted by the Mennonite peace stance, believer’s baptism and their way of following Jesus in daily life.
Having discovered that nobody in Europe is offering a tour program to the global Mennonite family, Fanoy decided to develop a tour program himself.
Individual travellers can book either a youth hostel heritage tour that covers Holland, North Germany and Poland, or one of three hotel tours: one to Holland, Germany, France and Switzerland; another to Holland, North Germany and Poland; or a third to South Germany, France and Switzerland.
These tours will not only focus on the Dutch heritage, but on European Mennonite heritage as well.
The tours from Holland to Poland will follow the footsteps of the 16th- and 17th- century Dutch Mennonites who first emigrated to Germany and later on to Poland. Tour members will visit the Berlin city centre and learn about the Iron Curtain that divided the city into East and West not long ago, and the Auschwitz concentration camp to learn about the World War II horrors that occurred there.
To learn more about Mennonite Heritage Tours online, visit
mennoniteheritagetours.eu, or e-mail Fanoy at ayoldfanoy@zonnet.nl.
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