Are you dreaming about traveling to the homeland of your German ancestors… ?
… but when it comes to planning your ancestral trip, you feel overwhelmed and don’t know where to start?
Don’t worry, I have got you covered!
Hallo! My name is Sonja Irani. I am the founder and main tour guide at My Ancestor’s Journey – an emigration-themed tour operator and travel advisor business based in Bremen, northern Germany.
I have been working as a professional tour guide for walking tours in the city of Bremen and as a tour leader on multi-day tours across Europe (Germany, Norway and Sweden) since 2018.
In 2019-2020, I studied “Tourism Destination Development” at Dalarna University, Sweden. Here, I wrote my Master thesis about “The most memorable travel experiences of North American ancestral travelers to Germany”.
Ever since then, I specialize in emigration-themed and ancestry-inspired guided tours for Americans who would like to find out more about their German roots.
How My Ancestor’s Journey can help you make that dream come true!
My “hometown of choice”, Bremen, is the perfect starting place to learn more about your German ancestors. After all, more than 7 million people emigrated to the “New World” (mostly to America) from either Bremen or the nearby harbor town of Bremerhaven between 1830 and 1974.
That’s why I have created the 3-day emigration-themed guided tour, on which you will explore several emigration-related sites in Bremen and surrounding areas in northern Germany with me as your personal guide.
If you have ancestors from Germany and are planning to visit, this short weekend trip (Thursday evening to Monday morning) along the north German emigration cities Bremen, Bremerhaven and Cloppenburg in Lower Saxony may be the perfect introduction tour for your family heritage trip to Germany.
On this tour, you will learn a lot about your German ancestors – including how they lived here, which reasons they had for emigrating and what their emigration experience was like.
The tour is offered every summer (July, August and September departures are guaranteed, May & June on request) and can be booked as a 100 % private tour from a minimum of 2 participants.
From Translator to Tour Guide:
My journey so far
A little bit more about me and my journey so far: I am originally from Ankum, a small town in Lower Saxony (northwest Germany) near the city of Osnabrück. But for as long as I can remember, I have been fascinated by other cultures and countries. And I always wanted to live somewhere else!
Perhaps this is due to the fact that I have a so-called “multicultural background”. My mom is German. But my dad is originally from India and has Persian ancestors that emigrated from Iran to India many centuries ago (hence our surname “Irani”).
In high school, I made one of my biggest dreams come true and lived abroad as a German exchange student in Hampshire, England for one year. I always knew I wanted to do something with languages and other cultures, so from 2006 to 2009, I studied “Multilingual Communication” at college in Cologne and graduated with a Bachelor’s degree. For the next decade, I worked as an English to German Marketing Translator, Editor and (Travel) Journalist.
In 2011, after having worked for one and a half years at a fashion company near my north German hometown Ankum, I made two very big decisions: First, I quit my job to be able to travel through the USA (East Coast to West Coast and visiting some relatives in-between) for 3 whole months! Then, I moved (or emigrated) to London, England, where I lived and worked for the next three and a half years between 2011 and 2015. When I moved back to Germany in 2015, I decided to settle in Bremen because I always thought that the city had just the right size (not too big, not too small).
As I was doing more and more translations and writing assignments in tourism marketing, I became interested in tour guiding. So in the summer of 2018, I started out as a professional local tour guide for walking tours in Bremen. In 2019, a German tour operator for multi-day guided group tours approached me, so from the summer season of 2019, I additionally worked as a tour leader on multi-day guided group tours (1-2 weeks) in Germany, Norway and Sweden.
And yes, I did tour leading for guided group tours in the summer seasons of 2020, 2021 and 2022 – so each season came with a new set of challenges due to the COVID-19 pandemic. But I also learnt a lot during that time, so in terms of refining my tour guiding skills, those Covid years were indeed very helpful!
The two American brothers that started my interest in ancestry-inspired travel
Going back in time a little bit more now: My mom, Elisabeth Irani, and I first got interested in ancestry research when two brothers from Baltimore in America knocked on the door of my parents’ house in Ankum back in the year 2005.
They shared the same surname as my mom’s maiden name (Fleddermann). So after some digging in the local church archives, we found out that we were indeed related and that their ancestor and our ancestor were first cousins.
Over the years, we have received many more enquiries from Americans with German ancestors that emigrated from Ankum and surroundings. The area here is very rural and since most emigrants to America were poor peasant famers, there were a lot that emigrated from Ankum and surroundings.
My mom is a hobby genealogist and contributing member in the “Heimatverein” (local heritage society) of Ankum. These associations exist in many German towns, even very small villages. They are a great source of contact if you would like to visit your ancestors’ hometowns.
I have always been very interested in history. But I found that because of the personal connection, ancestry research is a great way to make historical events even more relatable and therefore more fun to learn about.
Exactly 10 years after I graduated with my initial Bachelor’s degree in languages and multi-cultural communication back in 2009, I decided to go back to college and emigrated a second time!
So from September 2019 to June 2020, I lived in Borlänge, Sweden, where I studied “Tourism Destination Development” at Dalarna University. Here, I combined my passion for ancestry-inspired travel and history and wrote my Master thesis about “The most memorable travel experiences of North American ancestral travelers to Germany”. For this thesis, I conducted 13 interviews with US-Americans and Canadians who had all been on a recent ancestry-inspired trip to Germany in 2019 and asked them about what their most memorable travel experiences were.
What’s next on your journey
The two American brothers from Baltimore were lucky with their “knocking on doors” approach. However, this method isn’t always successful for finding out more about your German ancestors and connecting with living relatives. Usually, it pays off to plan your ancestry trip to Germany more thoroughly and longer in advance.
That’s why I have created the new Germany ancestry trip planning online course, which will open for enrollment in late 2025.
If you like to stay updated for the launch and secure a special bonus once course registration opens, you can sign up to the course waiting list. This waiting list is completely non-binding with no commitment to purchase the course later on.
Meanwhile, you can also check out my travel blog. Here, I provide ancestry travel tips and destination inspirations for your family heritage trip to Germany.
And who knows? Maybe you will soon get to stand in your ancestor’s home just like I stand in a typical north German farmer’s house in the open-air museum of Cloppenburg in this photo.
PS: Just in case you are wondering: Yes, I have changed my hair color a few times in recent years. I was blond between 2021 and 2023, but I am back to my natural brown hair now. 🙂
Start planning your ancestry trip to Germany today for 0 $!
Is your dream to go on an ancestry-inspired trip to Germany? So you can learn more about your German ancestors and literally walk in their footsteps?
Well today, you can take the first “baby steps” to make your travel dream come true.
In the Germany Trip Planning MINI GUIDE (PDF) provides 18 ideas for ancestry-inspired activities on your trip as well as an overview of all main travel regions in Germany.
There is also an “Ancestor’s Fact File”, which you can fill in with everything you already know about your German ancestor(s) and thus come up with a few more activity ideas for your very own trip.
So, what are you waiting for? Plan your trip today and walk in your ancestors’ footsteps tomorrow!
Download Your Mini Guide