WITNESS

Driving west on the 90 through Indiana we were detoured from the main highway along some smaller roads. At first this unrehearsed ball-ache seeemd like it was cutting into our time yet it turns out, as the saying goes, that sometimes the journey ellipses the destination and on this occasion it truly did. from the point on, we made a vow to each other, we would not scramble back cross-country at such a break-neck speed.

We saw a real, living Amish person doing road maintenance in the town of LaGrange and then drove through several Amish towns eventually settling in Shipshewana. With a curious mix of new meets old, black, horse drawn carriages clip-clopped passed cars or pulled up next to petrol pumps.

The "plain people" as they are known are tri-lingual, speaking English, High German and Pennsylvanian-Dutch though here it is with a Swiss dialect. Amish children in traditional dress rode bikes or played volleyball in headscarves, hats and dungarees no doubt before a dinner of cooked ham shoulders and potato salad served with hunks of crusty bread while the townsfolk sang Christian hymns and built barns in a day.

It was a refreshing change to the Interstate, a glimpse of something different from The United States of Generica, our new name for this secured wifi, mall-infested country.

No sign of Harrison Ford or any evidence the Amish are good at bowling though.

As the sun set on another day we made our way towards South Bend and then onto Chicago.