The first weekend in September I drove up with my friends Liz and Alex to Lancaster, PA - a.k.a. Amish Country. I had previously visited a predominantly Amish city while on my Nauvoo Study Abroad back in 2006 when we went to Shipshewana, IN (I might have only mentioned that simply because I love saying the name Shipshewana). I remember really enjoying that little town, but mostly I remembered that the Amish make incredible food. If you are EVER near an Amish marketplace that sells fresh soft pretzels, you absolutely must get one. I don't know what they put in their bread dough, but they are the most fantastic things I've ever eaten. There is an Amish marketplace in Germantown, MD (fairly close to where I live now) that I have been to a couple times since living out here. It was in Germantown that I was introduced to the hot dog wrapped in a pretzel with melted cheese inside. A hot dog never tasted so good. The cinnamon sugar ones also get honorable mention.
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| Immergut (Always Good). The Amish don't lie. |
Now that I've given that lovely introduction and all of your mouths are salivating, we'll start from the beginning. We arrived on a Friday night and took up lodging at a lovely Ramada Inn in Lancaster, PA, where there was a country dance club on the lower level called "Low Places" and hallways that smelled of moldy rags. Luckily our room turned out to be quite nice and the repugnant smell disappeared once the door was shut. We settled in to waste some time watching TV before going to bed for the night and quickly discovered that their "cable" included approximately 10 real channels and about 50 channels of blue screens. No matter - we found a lovely documentary about how the "Beatles Rocked the Kremlin." This show immediately caught our attention as the narrator began the show with an introduction discussing how Beatles music basically brought down Communism in Russia, while the screen displayed black and white footage of a bleak looking post WWII Russia. We all burst out laughing and decided this show must be watched. Turns out, they actually weren't making this up. I ended up watching the entire thing and it was actually a pretty great documentary about how much affect the Beatles music had on these young kids in Russia. The government absolutely forbid them from listening, so naturally everyone wanted to. They started passing albums around through and underground system. If you were caught, you went to jail! Jail! For having the Beatles! Of course there were some crazies on the show, like the old man being interviewed who showed the camera crew his "shrine" to the Beatles containing paraphernalia that he had been collecting since he was a teenager. I guess the point is, you never know what kind of hidden jewel you'll find when channel surfing in a hotel.
The next morning Alex and Liz were supposed to go in a hot air balloon (this had been the original purpose of the trip), but it was canceled due to inclement weather, so we ended up spending the whole day in Amish country. First we went to The Amish Village - a real Amish home and farm that has been converted into a touring site. I've always been interested in the Amish way of life and I quite enjoyed our tour of their home and land. Memorable things I learned:
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| Liz and I in an Amish buggy - um, where am I supposed to put my 8 children? |
- The women pin their dresses on. Every day. With sewing pins.
- The women always part their hair down the middle and pull it into a tight bun. They usually end up going bald on their part because they pull it so tight every day.
- All of the children go to school until 8th grade (their own school with an Amish teacher) and then stop. No one goes past 8th grade.
- Teenagers are allowed to take a year of their lives to try life outside the Amish belief system, in the "real world" and then decide whether or not to stick with the Amish way for life. This is called "rumspringa." I always thought this was a year of basically doing anything and everything you wanted. But you actually still adhere to your parents rules and complete your daily chores and live in the home. They are just more relaxed about letting you go out at night and wearing typical teenage clothing and talking on cell phones, etc. About 90% decide to be baptized and stay with it.
- If they decide to not come back, they are still accepted by their families and friends. However, if you are baptized and then depart from it later - you will be shunned from Amish society.
- They speak German in their households. They are taught English in school, but they speak German in their church services and read from German Bibles. Also, their church services are 3 or 4 hours of sitting in one room reading from a German Bible. I think I am beginning to see where the Amish patience comes from...
- They have small and simple celebrations for weddings, but the bride and groom stick around because they are expected to HELP CLEAN UP the next morning! What?!
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| Alex in Amish farmland. It suits her, no? |
After Amish Village, we drove through Bird-In-Hand (which takes about 5 minutes) and on towards Intercourse, PA. Am I immature for giggling at that city name? Probably. But at least I didn't buy the playing cards that said I *heart* Intercourse on the back of them. Things I did buy: a wonderful smelling candle - Iced Oatmeal Cookie - which actually smells like Pumpkin spice to me and makes me think of Christmas time at home. I light it in my room all the time because the smell just makes me happy. A jam sampler of 6 different types of jams, ranging from Peach/Pineapple to Apple Cinnamon Jelly. There was this store called "Kitchen Kettle Village" that was a smaller version of Costco, complete with tasting stations throughout the store where you could try all the different flavors of jam, salsa, peanut butter, honey, etc. They had these fantastic jars of peanut butter that were flavored. One was peanut butter banana and another was peanut butter chocolate. Brilliant! I believe I tried every single flavor in that store...lunch was no longer necessary. But of course, one does not walk past Immergut and not get a pretzel. That would just be absurd. Suffice it to say, I did not come away from this trip hungry.
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| No, I am not overly excited because that guy next to me has an iPhone. |
We also took a tour of a pretzel factory. They took us in the back and demonstrated their process of making hundreds of pretzels every day (the hard ones that are packaged, not to be confused with Immergut). Then each person was given some dough to try to make their own pretzel. I think I missed my calling in life - I was totally a natural, as evidenced by this picture. If you need more evidence, I still have the sticker presented to those of us who mastered the pretzel-making technique (o.k. maybe everyone got a sticker).
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| The calm before the storm. |
After some more wandering through shops - one of which was a fudge factory where we observed a girl shape this slab of probably 50 lbs of hot fudge while it hardened - we headed back to the car. Just in time! Out of nowhere appeared masses of dark clouds. The heavens opened and flooded the streets of Intercourse. We drove to an indoor marketplace and wandered around there for a while, waiting for the storm to blow over. It was quite the torrential downpour.
We finished off the trip with dinner at a local Country Store that gave us some good old-fashioned meat and mashed potatoes smothered in gravy. Delightful. Except for Liz who ordered a baked potato that ended up coming out smothered in "radioactive" nacho cheese. Somehow this radioactive cheese seems to pop up somewhere in her food every time we eat out. Just one of those mysteries of life I guess.
Liz and Alex are heading back to magical Lancaster, PA tomorrow to hopefully actually get in the air for their hot air balloon ride. I'm crossing my fingers that an Immergut cinnamon sugar pretzel magically appears on my doorstep tomorrow night...
Again, sorry for the delay in updating the blog - more posts coming this week!
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