Montana! The prairie and mountains and just a few people. Few people – little traffic. Little traffic – bad times for a hitchhiker. A very long straight street, me and mosquitos. Every minute a car passed by. I was sitting on my backpack, the mosquitos were sitting on me. Not the best moment during my travelling. Usually, in such a situation I would start walking, just to have the feeling that I was moving forward. But here in Montana it does not make any sense. A small village every 20–30 kilometers. I was waiting and waiting. My hope was just: “O.K. IF somebody stops, they will give me a ride for many miles.”
After more than five hours, a car stopped. I could hardly believe it anymore that I was going to leave this place. It was time to say good bye to the mosquitos and to get into the car of an older man. What he said first: "But I only drive 30 miles down the road". I was shocked. After more than five hours just a 30-mile ride. Such a short trip in huge Montana. 30 miles! How long do I need to wait when he drops me off in 25 minutes? We began to talk. "Ah, you are from Germany? I'm going to visit some Germans now. I want to sell them some agricultural machinery. If you want, you can come with me to meet them.” At first I was only very little enthusiastic. I didn't find it so exciting to meet Germans until he mentioned that these Germans were Hutterites. Hutterites, I've heard of them. Strict Christians who were persecuted a long time ago in Europe because of their beliefs until they finally came to America, where everyone was allowed to believe what they wanted – besides the Native Americans.
The name comes from Jakob Hutter, the founder of this movement in 1528. The Hutterites still today try to live like the first Christians did. That means, for example, sharing everything. Because of their teaching and their lifestyle they have been in trouble all the time. Today, approximately 45,000 Hutterites live almost exclusively in the United States and Canada. They still speak German among each other, with a Bavarian-Austrian dialect.
The Hutterites live isolated from society in their communities. I was really lucky to meet them. That's the great thing about hitchhiking, frustration and pure happiness sometimes alternate very quickly and you never know what will happen next. After 20 minutes we turned off the highway and rumbled about a few kilometers over a dirt road. In the distance, I could already see the Hutterite Colony. A collection of simple, one-storey, elongated houses, all looking the same, with the larger one in the middle, and a few barns.
We parked the car and a few men came to welcome us. Everyone was dressed the same. Black shoes, black hat, black vest, white shirt. They spoke English with my driver. To each other they spoke in a very old southern German accent, which was difficult for me to understand.
Two young women were asked to show me the colony in the meantime. The man left for his business meeting. I was surprised that the elders left me, a young bad-smelling hippie, alone with the two young women. They spoke to me in their own German which I hardly understood. They looked at me, repeated what they said twice and were surprised that I still did not understand them correctly. Finally, they switched to English and the tour started, a journey into another world.
It was not only the men who were all dressed the same. The boys, too, already looked like their fathers, wearing the same clothes, just smaller. And the girls looked like their mothers with long simple dresses and headscarves. I guess the idea is that we are all the same. Individualism is a sin.
Hardly anything is bought outside the colony. The clothes, for example, are sewn by the women in the colony, I got told. The girls explained to me that the colony never grows larger than 140 people. If there are 140, the group divides. Seventy of them stay and the other seventy move to a new place, starting a new village. Most of the money belongs to the community and with it they buy land and materials for houses, new tractors and whatever else they are not able to produce on their own. Together they build the second settlement and then seventy of them move in. I heard that they split 30 years ago and then again just a few years ago. Now there are already 80 of them. Hutterite families usually have many kids. Money doesn’t seem to be a problem. They produce almost everything themselves, so they buy almost nothing and work incredibly hard. And unlike the Mennonites I met a few weeks ago, they have no problem with modern technology as long as it is good for work and not for their own enjoyment. The nice gentleman who took me with him knew that too, which was why he was hoping for a good deal.
I was shown the kindergarten first. It was a not-so-large dark-wood room. No toys, no pens. No pictures on the walls. Tables, chairs, a shelf with a single book. Which one? The Bible. That was it. “We read every day to our children from the Bible,” my guides explained.
Before I could ask something, we went on to the school. It did not look much different than the kindergarten. Maybe it looked that simple because the school was also used as the church of the colony. It is not difficult to open a school in the United States. The colony has its own. That way the Hutterites decide what to teach. Subjects, such as Sexual Education and Evolution will certainly not exist in this school. It’s in school that children first start learning English. They go to school eight years. In this time, they learn everything they need to know as a Hutterite. I don't think they learn much about the outside world. I had the feeling their world ended at the end of their huge fields. The little school looked like a school museum, I would say from 1850. Their teachers, I hardly think that they were professional teachers.
Those who were lucky were allowed to leave the colony once a week to visit the farmers’ market in the nearby town to sell vegetables and bread. That was what they saw of the world. Sometimes they left their colony for a visit to another colony, for example for a wedding.
My hosts were very friendly. They answered all my questions, smiled friendly and they also asked me questions, such as “Is German still the spoken language in Germany?” or “Do you still have farmers in Germany?”.
We went into the main building, where there was a large kitchen and a huge dining room. They cooked for everyone and everybody ate together, well, more or less together. They explained to me that women and men eat at separate long tables. After adults are finished with their meal it’s time for children to come and eat. Also, it wasn’t meal time, but I got something to try and it tasted wonderful. The food was great, homemade and organic. But is there also coffee for the adults and chocolate for the children? I don´t know. But I saw the children had modern toys to play with. So I saw a couple of boys playing in the sand with toy tractors and toy harvesters. A good way to prepare them for their future. Nobody works outside of the colony.
An elderly man waved and came up to me after the tour. He invited me to his apartment. The place was very simply furnished, no frills, nothing that would make the room nice. Everything was functional. He was a little nervous and in a hurry. He asked me if he could exchange money with me. He still had German money and would like to exchange it for dollars. I got the impression that the elders of the colony shouldn't necessarily know anything about this. He showed me the bill. 100 marks, from 1920. When I told him that this money no longer existed in Germany and that you could no longer buy anything with it, he was quite disappointed.
I asked in the end how they make decisions. The two young women explained: “We have a chief and a vice-chief, men, we have somebody for the money, a man, a chief for the animals and one for the machines, two men. That’s it. They make the decisions. The other men can bring up issues and comment issues. The women keep quiet.”
As already mentioned, the Hutterites were persecuted in Germany. The ancestors of my hosts had therefore emigrated from Germany to Russia to be able to live according to their own rules and beliefs. When they were facing more and more reprisals in Russia, they emigrated to the United States about 170 years ago. There they settled down in Minnesota. When the men refused to fight as soldiers in World War I because of religious reasons, they had to leave the USA and went to Canada. Now they were slowly coming back to the USA, building up new colonies.
In the end, being back at the car of my driver, they asked me about my plans and I told them that I didn’t have any plans, but lots of time, little money and no place to stay. I was hoping that they would invite me to stay overnight or even longer. But they did not.
A strange world I got into. So many rules and restrictions. Clear hierarchies, with rules on who has a say and who gets to decide. But they did not look unhappy. Everything was well regulated; you had no existential worries; you didn't have to think too much yourself. This can also be a very cozy lifestyle.
I would have loved to stay longer. But my try failed. The head of the community said quite charmingly that it would be a good opportunity to leave together with “my” driver again.
After my two-hour visit in a different world I was back in the same car and on my way back into the old world. After a few minutes I was back on the same street like most of the time today, waiting for a car to stop and to take me forward. My next goal was to visit Yellow Stone National Park. I was curious if it would work faster now. It didn't. I stood and stood and stood. But that wasn't too bad. I had so much time to think about my newest experience. I gave up when it got dark. I slept just a few meters from the road. In order not to attract attention, I did not set up my tent but simply lay down in my sleeping bag. In the United States, each state has a different license plate. That is a nice way for people to promote their own state. In Montana, the license plate says "Big Sky Country”.
Now I had time to prove that. And indeed, the sky looked bigger and brighter here and I saw so many stars that night.
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