As a travel agent, Debbie Hudzik has spent years planning vacations for others. This year, it was time for the owner of Lotus Travel Company to plan her own epic adventure.
Hudzik left Florida in February armed with a one-way ticket overseas, along with a genetic report and the contact info for some newfound family members. On a quest to discover her roots, she set out to visit the places her ancestors were from to get a better idea of where she came from. “The older I get, the more I want to know my backstory,” says Hudzik.
A growing trend in the travel business, ancestry travel—also known as genealogy travel or heritage travel—focuses on tracing your family’s journey, visiting the places where your ancestors lived, and experiencing the culture and history that shaped your family’s history. For Hudzik, the desire to embrace the trend began last year, after she ordered a genetic testing kit from 23andMe. She sent in her saliva for analysis, and the results were both expected and surprising. “I knew my father was 100 percent Polish, and my mom said her ancestors were from Germany,” says Hudzik. “But we didn’t really know much else.” The report showed that Hudzik was 52 percent Polish and Ukrainian, 32 percent French and German, and 13 percent British and Irish. It also pinpointed exactly where in the world Hudzik’s ancestors had hailed from—places like Swansea in Wales, Ternopil Oblast in Ukraine, and Baden-Württemberg in Germany—which she quickly began exploring on Google Maps.
Hudzik decided to open an account on ancestry.com so she could locate kin around the world. “I found a relative in Poland who connected me with two other relatives,” she says. Before she knew it, she had more than 200 relatives in her Ancestry database.
She began planning her ancestral voyage, with a little help from social media. On sites like Facebook, she collaborated with people who had planned similar heritage journeys. “I met someone who was able to find her great-grandmother by going to the town she was from,
visiting coffee shops and churches, and just walking around talking to people,” says Hudzik.
As Hudzik heads out on her ancestral voyage this summer, she is aware that the changing borders of European countries over the years might pose challenges in her quest to trace her own roots, as history can often be erased along the way. “During World War II, many records were destroyed, which makes things more difficult,” she says. Nonetheless, she is excited to see what she might discover about her ancestors—and herself.
Since February, Hudzik has been traveling for business and leisure to places including Vietnam, Cambodia, Bali, and Turkey. But this summer, she begins the personal leg of her journey, starting in Krakow, Poland and visiting 38 regions in seven countries when all is said and done. In Krakow, she will be staying with some newly discovered relatives, and she is looking forward to the unknown.
“I don’t know what I’m doing,” Hudzik says. “I’m just going to go and walk the streets and hope to get a better understanding of myself and who I am.”
Follow along with Hudzik on her ancestry travels at thelotusnomad.com.
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