Travel Reference
In-Depth Information
Americans are so fascinated by the Amish way of life, by the idea of people living z00
years in the past, that they come quite literally by the millions to gawk. There were hun-
dreds and hun dreds of tourists thronging Intercourse when we arrived, and cars and buses
choking the roads into town. Everyone hoped to see and photograph some genuine Amish.
Up to five million people a year visit the county and non-Amish businessmen have erected
vastsouvenirpalaces,replicafarms,waxmuseums,cafeterias andgiftshopstosoakupthe
$350 million that the visitors are happy to spend each year. Now there is almost nothing
left in these towns for the Amish themselves to buy, so they don't come in and the tourists
have nothing to do but take pictures of each other.
Travel articles and movies like Witness generally gloss over this side of things, but the
fact is that Lancaster County is now one of the most awful places in America, especially
on week ends when traffic jams sometimes stretch for miles. Many of the Amish them-
selves have given up and moved to places like Iowa and upper Michigan where they are
left alone. Out in the countryside, particularly on the back roads, you can still sometimes
see the people in their funny dark clothes working in the fields or driving their distinctive
black buggies down the highway, with a long line of tourist cars creeping along behind,
pissed off because they can't get by and they really want to be in Bird in Hand so they can
get some more funnel cakes and SnoCones and perhaps buy a wrought-iron wine rack or
combinationmailbox-weathervanetotakebackhometoFartvillewiththem.Iwouldn'tbe
surprised if a decade from now there isn't a real Amish person left in the county. It is an
unspeakable shame. They should be left in peace.
In the evening, along with everyone else in the whole of Pennsylvania, we went to one
of the many barnlike family-style Pennsylvania Dutch restaurants that are scattered across
the county. The parking lot was packed with buses and cars and there were people waiting
everywhere, inside the building and out. We went in and were given a ticket with the num-
ber 621 on it and went with it to a tiny patch of floor space just vacated by another party.
Every few minutes a man would step to the door and call out a series of numbers ridicu-
lously lower than ours-220, 221, 222-and a dozen or so people would follow him into the
dining room. We debated leaving, but a party of fat people beside us told us not to give up
because it was worth the wait, even if we had to stay there until eleven o'clock. The food
was that good, they said, and where food was concerned these people clearly had some ex-
perience. Well, they were right. Eventually our number was called and we were ushered
into the dining room with nine strangers and all seated together at one big trestle table.
There must have been fifty other such tables in the room, all with a dozen or so people at
them. The din and bustle were enormous. Waitresses rushed back and forth with outsized
trays and everywhere you looked people were shoveling food into their mouths, elbows
