Tour Leader’s Blog

The TourMagination Bus trip to Pennsylvania (including Sight and Sound) arrived in Lancaster County last evening. The fall colors were beautiful in northern Pennsylvania. This morning we toured the Herr Snack Food factory and enjoyed the drive through the country side to Nottingham. We saw the Amish cutting and stacking the shocks of corn on the wagon.

Shady Maple Smorgasbord was enjoyed by all 38 participants. When we sat at our tables Lou Weber asked the hostess what time they close? This would give Lou 8 hours of eating time. At the Landis Valley Museum and Village we learned about life from 1820-1920. Perry Gingerich and Jim Schalin viewed the Conestoga wagon and discussed moving from here to Ontario. To think it needed to be water tight to float across the Niagara river!

On the way to our hotel Karissa and Aerin sang “Our Song”. Wonderful fellowship and discoveries today.

~ Wilmer Martin

What an adventure: We headed off in the September drizzle to find our parents’ original home and furniture factory in Neudorf bei Graudenz. Without a church or town hall in the village, we hoped we could depend on memories of the old folks we might meet. Arriving from the north, we met a man on a bicycle who told us the name of an elderly man living in town who “would know everything there was about Nowe Wies”. Our vivacious guide knocked on this man’s door and apparently got him from his nap, but he did seem to remember a factory – a furniture factory that had become a military machine shop and then totally destroyed during WWII. He said it was back north towards the centre of town, gesturing a bit eastwards. Turn right at the Sklep, he kept saying, turn right at the Sklep. So we did turn right at the Sklep (corner store), but we didn’t realize it wasn’t quite the right “right”. In our ignorance, we took the obligatory family photos and even bought a few snacks at the Sklep in celebration. Meanwhile our driver had gone off with another old man to do a bit of his own detective work and when he returned, he informed us that this wasn’t quite the right place, that we needed to walk just a little further east. So we did and … sure enough, near a relatively new-looking house there was an old retaining wall, an orchard and possibly the remains of a foundation. Was this really the yard we were looking for? The answer came as we walked back along the street: We saw a sign on a door built into the side of the hillside. When we asked our guide to translate it, she said it identified the site of the town’s water source – just as we had heard from stories! The whole experience was made even more memorable when we met the neighbour across the street, a kind gentleman who spoke a little German and who remembered stories of the factory during the war. He invited us in for schnapps, gave all the women a rose from his garden, and even skipped his doctor’s appointment just to chat with us.

~ Harold Fast

Each day of this trip has brought meaningful and unique experiences, discoveries, and fellowship. Today was no exception. Here are a few of my highlights from today.

We began the day by searching and helping others search for ancestors at the Mennonite cemeteries of Huebuden and Furstenwerder-Barwalde. As we came across legible gravestones, many people called out the names for others to hear. “There’s a Fast over here!” “Wiebe, here!”, “I found a Harder!”. We took a tour of the headquarters of the Teutonic Knights in Malbork, formerly known as Marienburg. In a couple of the rooms we took advantage of the exceptional acoustics by singing as a group. Naturally, we sang Hymn #606. We stumbled upon the homestead of my great-great grandparents, Paul and Emmy Epp, in the village of Herrenhagen, now known as Plelica. The initials, “P.E.” were inscribed on the front of the red-brick barn, just as my Oma remembered the last time she visited the farm as an 8-year-old child. We were met with warm greetings from the current residents, as the rest of our group members looked on from the tour bus.

Today I stood where my great-great grandparents once lived, worked and raised a family before they had to flee the area. It was a very meaningful day for myself, my Oma and not surprisingly, for the entire group. A happy Sunday it was indeed. I am thankful to be able to have spent the past five days with an inspiring group of people in Poland with TourMagination.

~ Angie Goertz

Last evening 30 persons gathered at the Chambersburg Mennonite Church to meet Wilmer and Janet Martin and learn of the TourMagination program. The feature tour was Pennsylvania to Europe (A European Heritage Tour) and the Oberammergau Play 2010.

The event had a strong turn out with more than 30 persons watching the power point presentation on our European Heritage tours and the upcoming Passion Play. During the question and answer period which followed, it was evident that there was strong interest in the Pennsylvania to Europe 2010 tour. With last night’s registration, the tour is now 60 percent filled. Due to the strong interest shown, we expect the tour to fill primarily with participants from Pennsylvania. Any one interested in joining should call Harry and Kathy Lehman, or TourMagination at 1-800-565-0451.

Today we visited Deutsch Kasun where we walked around the old Mennonite Church. Alice Funkenhauser, my mother, attended Sunday School here as a young child. The church building is now a family home and the owner was generous enough to pick a bucket full of his grapes for us. In September 1939 the pastor of this church, Pastor Bartel, was shot by the Nazis who, because of his German origins, thought he was a traitor communicating with the enemy. My grandfather, Gerhard Nickel, was the pastor of the church before Pastor Bartel.

My mother told the story of her home close to the church and how, prior to fleeing during during the war, they buried their dishes and silverware. No one knows if the dishes are still in the ground as a highway was built where the house stood. She was 14 at the time and remembers seeing the bombs falling over Modlin, the local fortress on the Vistula River. She described them as clusters of grapes falling from the sky. We drove over the original bridge she would ride her bike over to school.

We then drove to a small village called Wilkow where the homestead of the Mandau family is located. Gudrun Fitz-gerald, Reta Curran, Martha Schaus and Carol Buetikofer are descendants of the Mandau family. We ventured down a dirt road to the overgrown gravesite of the Mandau family. The headstones were covered with moss and vegetation because there are no longer local Mandaus in the area to look after them. We also visited the old church in Secyminek where Reta and Martha’s parents met. It has been an exciting day of family discoveries.

~ Carla Beaton