History

Since 1990 we, the Rettau Family have been active as tour operator for camping and caravanning tours as Perestroika Tours and Mir Tours & Services.  

First contacts with the Soviet Union are tied. A declaration of intention with the potential partners in Moscow and Minsk signed.

A joint venture company Camping Perestroika is established in Belarus. This company has the task to promote camping tourism of western tourists into the Soviet Union.

The first tours to Belarus take place in a bi-weekly rhythm.

Belorussian Week on the campsite Schinderhannes: around fifty Belarussians bring their culture and cuisine to the Hunsrück. 

Belarus is getting too small. The first camping tourists travel to Lithuania and to Kaliningrad, which was the former East Prussia.

The Perestroika clients reach Moscow and St. Petersburg. 

The tours go further and further: to the Ural mountains, Lake Baikal, to Siberia and Mongolia.

The first Christmas-Get-Together takes place: since then our regular information and participants meetings attract more and more people to the Hunsrück.

The first of many China trips calls for adventure!!! 28000 km within 140 days to Beijing and back. Since then more than 200 participants have experienced the tour. 

A new marathon-tour is created: North Africa - Egypt - Near East. The tour took place 13 times, even in the year of the Iraq war.

Perestroika Tours changes into a private limited company. Also the Mir-Club is initiated. 

New territory is accessed with the India-Nepal tour.

The journey of superlatives (some say it is the best Perestroika Tour) to "South-East-Asia Singapore" -  all overland and back. As the first motor home group we enter Vietnam and Myanmar. 

A television crew accompanies a group to Karelia for a film called "Retirees on Tour" 

Leave the winter for the warm: a group is spending Christmas in Jordan and the first months of the year on the Arabian Peninsula.

During a three-month-stay in Islamabad a regular motor caravan is turned into a very special one: completely colour-painted with pictures from the history of Pakistan, animals and Perestroika tour destinations.

South America is visited for the first time.

The generation of founders retires; the company is now led by Sabine Machado-Rettau

The  One week in -series of tours offers more opportunities for employed persons and those seeking more individuality.

Despite many obstacles (unrest in Tibet, torch relay and Olympic Summer Games) a group goes to Beijing and back.

During the first  Long Week there is a small celebration for the 10 year of Marco Polo besides the Mir-Club Meeting and the Workshops.

In the autumn the first workshop-week is taking place on the Schinderhannes campsite. The tour-guides and the Perestroika-Staff get you going in regards to GPS navigation, image-editing, computers and languages.

Back to the roots: tours for the individuals are carried out again.

In early March the first Perestroika group and most likely the first camper group at all travels through Laos. On the return tour from Singapore the "Szechuan - Chinese Silk Road"-tour participants were delighted. Also enjoyed was the stay in southern China.

The operative business of the Perestroika Tours is taken over by Mir Tours & Services GmbH. The sisters Sabine Machado-Rettau and Susanne Rettau are now the owner of the touring business. The whole team (employees, tour leaders and touring partners) came along. 

Around Easter the office moves to a new location in Birkheim.

In August a new website is presented and the first catalogue under the name of Mir Tours & Services is sent out.  

In March Mir Tours & Services GmbH signs a code of conduct for organized tours.

New tours are introduced during the springtime presentation, i.e. From the Danube to the Volga, around the Black Sea.  

Despite the Ukraine crisis, 13 units travel to Transcarpathia in the Western Ukraine in July. 

Due to the 25th anniversary there will be some celebrations at Easter. Also the Mir Club Meeting takes place at Camping Schinderhannes from April 03rd to 6th. 

For the international market an English-language catalogue is presented. In this you find short trips as well as the classic tours to Moscow-St. Petersburg and White Nights. 

With a tour to the Rhine and Moselle valleys, a cooperation with the "Camping and Caravanning Club" from Great Britain is started. Another joint venture is the Baltic States tour to St. Petersburg. 

With a new website, aiming at already booked clients we are showing once more how service oreintated Mir Tours is. The name of this site is www.mir-auch.de  translates as mir too. 

In time for the information days we are releasing the "Allein mir Mir" (Alone with Mir) hand book aimed at individual tourists for their tour planning. 

As of October 2019 a cooperation exists with the BurgStadt CampingPark in Kastellaun. This is now the house site in use for information events, pre-tour meetings and reunions.  

We are operating in our 30th year. Time to dust the photograph album and show some pictures with the title then and now = Damals-Heute.

The Corona Pandemic is messing up everyday life as well as the travel world. Many tours are cancelled and information events take place online.

While we looked at the year with good booking figures, unfortunately Vladimir Putin thwarted our plans in the last week of February. Because of the invasion of Ukraine, long-distance trips to Lake Baikal and Central Asia were be cancelled in February. Of course, we can't travel to Belarus or Russia in good conscience either. The early summer trips can not take place.