Wowed by Iowa

The presidential hopeful does a round of handshakes, picks up a baby for a photograph and thanks his supporters before dashing off again.

It was just another day in Iowa in the run-up to the Midwestern state's caucuses early this month, where the first steps were taken in deciding the next US president.

I arrived a few days before January 3 and managed to see all three main Democratic candidates at close quarters.

Iowans take for granted being able to quiz these political big-hitters in the flesh. The talk everywhere was of the merits of each potential nominee. The locals take seriously their responsibility; theirs is the first state to vote, so they set the agenda for the campaign.

It is a brief opportunity for Iowa to have a major voice in national politics. Now the frenzied electioneering is over, it will likely be off the news agenda for the next four years. Rural Iowa is what some east or west coasters disparagingly call a "fly-over state".

Slightly larger than England and with a population of only three million, it is in the middle of the US. There are no large cities, and small towns and farming communities prevail. The rich, black soil is reputedly some of the most fertile on the planet; vast harvests of maize and soya beans testify to this. It is also a land of extremes: baking hot in summer and with a blisteringly cold winter.

I stayed in Iowa City. Labelled by some "the Athens of the Midwest", it is a cultured place, home to the University of Iowa, whose Writers' Workshop can claim a dozen or so Pulitzer Prize-winners and Catch-22 author Kurt Vonnegut as a former faculty member.

The university's 30,000-strong student body boosts the city's population by half, so the place seems to be teeming with intellectuals. In the cavernous Java House café, we sipped piping-hot fresh coffee, munched on a blueberry muffin and watched dozens of people writing on laptops or jotters, or else reading novels or poetry.

We wandered beside the Iowa River - which runs through the city - around the university campus and about the small downtown area. A highlight there is Prairie Lights, a near-legendary independent bookstore that beats the big chains hands-down for its variety and vitality.

After attending a Democratic Party caucus in one of the university's auditoriums, we swung by the Hamburg Inn, an Iowa City landmark. The diner gets huge publicity every four years owing to its Coffee Bean Caucus, when visitors place a bean in a jar to vote for their favoured president. CNN's breakfast show was broadcasting from there that morning and it has featured on the West Wing.

The café is decorated with photos and tributes from politicians - presidents Bill Clinton and Ronald Reagan have both dined there - as well as political memorabilia. We sat at the Clinton table and enjoyed milkshakes and some post-caucus analysis.

Around Iowa City there are a number of distinct communities that emphasise how young the country is. Iowa came into being shortly after the civil war and, only a few generations ago, multiple languages were spoken there. There are still strong hints of this. Swedish, for instance, can be heard in the village of Swedesburg; the Dutch town of Pella has an annual Tulip Time festival to celebrate its heritage.

We drove south to our first stop, Kalona. The town, along with the rural areas around it, has a large Amish population.

The Amish began migrating to the Americas from Europe in the 18th century and are an Anabaptist Christian denomination, the most traditional of whom shun modernity entirely.

Old Order Amish do not use electricity, telephones or the motor car. They dress in Victorian-era clothes, farm their land using horses and speak in a peculiar German dialect.

In Kalona, we headed to a historical village showing how the Amish live and visited a small museum of elaborate, colourful, Bible or Iowa-inspired friendship quilts - something for which Amish women are famous.

As we headed out of town on gravel tracks linking isolated farms, stores and churches, a heavy snow began to fall. We drove past Amish families travelling in horse-drawn buggies, some enclosed but others exposed to the blizzard.

Then, in the gas-lit Community Country Store, dim as snow fall blotted out what was left of the late-afternoon sun, we bought home-made jam and pumpkin cake.

Another community is the Amana Colonies, a group of seven villages close to Iowa City. Originally settled by a German pietist group in 1855, the settlements were run on communist lines until the mid-1930s.

At that point, economic problems and social stresses forced the community to form a shared company to own property and run its businesses for profit, ending the experiment.

We spent a morning in Amana, a three-street village filled with craft and food shops. At the Ox Yoke Inn we had a vast lunch of German food served "family style" - with numerous dishes in small plates that can be refilled - as is the norm in the colonies.

Then we took a look at a quilting store and popped into the local micro-brewery, before heading to a chocolate shop for guilt-inducing coffees with shots of rich chocolate.

We also visited West Branch, a tiny town that would be unremarkable except for its most famous son: US president Herbert Hoover. Today it's the site of a museum, his birthplace and recreated buildings from his early life: a Quaker meeting house, school room and blacksmith's forge.

Hoover's life surely exemplifies the American dream. His parents' home was a small two-room shack. But he rose to become a mining engineer before being elected shortly before the Wall Street Crash, in 1929.

Despite all this, he is viewed with scorn by many Americans as the man who failed to deliver the US from the Great Depression, although that is scarcely mentioned in the glowing account of his works the museum gives.

It took two hours on a dead-straight highway surrounded by snow-quilted fields to reach Des Moines, the state capital. We stayed in East Village, a former industrial area that is gradually being turned into loft apartments and trendy restaurants.

Nearby is the pinnacle of the city, the magnificent State Capitol, with its stunning gilded dome.

Completed in 1886, the building offers a fascinating insight into post-Civil War America, not only by the canons around it. Frescos line the walls around the rotunda but instead of Greek gods, they depict 19th century Iowans building the state.

After taking a quick tour of its glistening interior, and the state legislature assemblies, we wandered the grounds to view some of the statues scattered there. One that stood out was a civil war monument portraying Iowa as a young mother offering "nourishment" to her children in the most seductive manner imaginable.

We were in need of nourishment ourselves and headed to the nearby Gong Fu teahouse, a wondrous independent establishment. Behind a long hardwood counter there are 500 jars filled with different teas - a catalogue is provided to guide drinkers' taste buds.

Despite this being the land of coffee culture, plenty of locals were trying a brew.

You may not read about Iowa in your newspaper for another four years. But I discovered the state, with all its unique charms, certainly has something to offer the visitor curious to experience some genuine American culture.