Advertisement
Published: August 6th 2007
Edit Blog Post
30/04/07 - 02/05/07 Shipshewana, Northern Indiana
With a week of the rental car left and in Chicago already we decided to head out of town for a few days, whichever way the wind would carry us and see the surrounding area for a while. The wind first took us north up the North Shore Drive into a very prosperous residential district with mansions and lake houses for the wealthy Chicagoans (is that a word?) to strut their stuff. We got so lost within the rabbit warren of the North Shore that we had finally had to ask directions to the Interstate from the bunch of Fireman chilling outside their fire station (much to Jen’s delight!!) We had planned to grab an extra state to notch up on our belts and nip into Wisconsin to Milwaukee but when we finally found the interstate somehow we only found a ramp heading south back to Chicago and beyond, so we let fate take us south instead and we zoomed through Chicago and rounded Lake Michigan to the south. After a night in one of the interstate motels, we carried on round the lake to Saugatuck and relaxed for a night by the lake.
For 2 days we wandered aimlessly round Michigan picking places by name on the map to check out and nearly picking up a speeding ticket too in the process but the friendly Michigan officer decided to treat our 80 in a 55 as a ‘learning experience’
We headed north, nearly as far as Mackinac Island and toyed with the idea of heading over but we just weren’t sure. The island has no cars, just bicycles and horse drawn buggies, but we were nervous that it would be dreadfully touristy and/or pretty much closed seeing as it was literally the first day of their season (1st May). Also the comments of our last B and B host that it’s just “Fudge and horse shit” kept ringing in our minds. The final straw to help us decide was the weather. The more north we had driven the colder it had become and with grey skies and drizzly rain, we did a big U-turn and drove all day back down to the Indiana state line where we knew we would see some other horse-drawn buggies in the Amish village of Shipshewana.
Approaching Shipshewana, our first clue of entering Amish country was
the horse and buggy yellow warning road sign. We soon spotted one of the distinctive black buggies, pulled along by a magnificent trotting horse. Respecting the Amish privacy, I was selective with the camera, trying to frame shots of the landscape, buggies and barns without embarrassing any members of the church with ‘immodest modeling’
We visited the
mennohof which had a fascinating and informative set of presentations and displays about the history and believes of the Amish, Mennonite and other Anabaptist communities and took an Amish buggy tour around the town and surrounding farm roads. The two Amish men chatted to us at length about the differences between England and the U.S. and various current issues. They obviously keep up to date through various newspapers as they can’t get their news from the television, radio or the Internet.
I tried to approach learning about the Amish people with a non-judgmental open mind, and to me as an
‘English’ outsider, the Amish lifestyle is a mixture of understandable logical behaviour in order to keep separate from the vices of the modern world and illogical, even hypocritical rules and regulations. For example, the Amish won’t be permanently physically linked to
the modern world with electricity and telephone cables and yet if they own a business such as a shop adjacent to their property they may use a vacuum cleaner in their home, plugged into their shop with a very long extension lead. They won’t have telephones in their homes but they often have telephone boxes just outside their property boundaries. Despite some seemingly contradictory rules and regulations, I couldn’t help but admire their simple, uncomplicated lifestyle and empathize with them for the harassment that they have suffered over the years, often out of ignorance and man’s fear of those whom they don’t understand.
For me, the most interesting thing about the Amish lifestyle is the teenage rites of passage - the
Rumspringa or literally ‘Running around’ when, before baptism into the church, a young person experiments with such vices as ‘English’ clothing, alcohol and tobacco - even cars, or maybe just decorating a courting buggy with a battery operated stereo system!! One teenage girl that served us in an Amish café (the home cooked fayre us great) was quite heavily made-up but wearing Amish attire. I tactfully questioned her on whether she was Amish or Mennonite and she explained
that she was raised Amish but not yet baptized and therefore experimenting with makeup during her Rumspringa.
We stayed in a relaxing Bed and Breakfast named ‘Peaceful acres’ owned by a friendly Mennonite lady and had some deep conversations on the subjects of God and religion, which seemed to leave more questions hanging in the air then firm answers. Altogether it seemed like another life and time than just the couple of hours drive back to the sprawling metropolis of Chicago.
Advertisement
Tot: 0.256s; Tpl: 0.011s; cc: 39; qc: 170; dbt: 0.1474s; 1; m:domysql w:travelblog (10.17.0.13); sld: 1;
; mem: 1.4mb
travel amateur
non-member comment
travel China
I am a Chinese travel amateur, recently has made about the "travel China"website, welcome you the suggestion, Thank's http://www.travelachina.com/