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The last few weeks, Lancaster County has been talking about Lady Gaga. I don’t know much about her but even I was spending time talking about rumors that she may be moving to our fair corner of the world.  
The rumors started on Facebook and Twitter about her house-hunting in a gated community in northern Manheim Township called Bent Creek. The neighborhood of mini-mansions has several homes for sale that would match a pop music star’s taste and budget.
While there’s been no confirmation of her making an offer on one of them, it hasn’t stopped people from talking about Lady Gaga moving into the neighborhood.
They’re also asking: Why Lancaster County?
That answer seems to be simpler than the rhinestone-covered outfits the superstar usually wears. Her boyfriend is a Lancaster County native whose family lives in the area. She has come to visit her boyfriend, Taylor Kinney, who stars in the hit TV show The Vampire Diaries. (The couple met when Kinney, a 2000 graduate of Lancaster Mennonite High School, played her love interest in one of her music videos.)
In fact, a picture of a stiletto-healed Gaga walking around a grocery store up that way made the rounds on Twitter a few weeks ago.
But buying a house simply to have a place to stay when visiting your beau’s parents? Say that is the reason. Fine. Women have do ne far more for far less. Even if that’s the only reason for her home-purchasing plans, the “Marry the Night” singer will quickly learn there are other reasons to love the place where I’ve called home for more than a decade.
Let’s look at Lancaster County’s central location. It’s perfect for any jet-setter who likes to be a short drive from beaches, mountains, rivers and major cities – Washington DC, Baltimore, Philadelphia and, of course, her home town of New York City.
And you can’t beat the scenery on these drives. There are miles and miles of fields dotted by cows and punctuated by turn-of-the-century farmhouses. It’s actually for what Amish Country is best known. There are miles of horizon along which you can almost always see a gorgeous sunset.
We have great communities like Lititz, where you can walk down the streets lined with mom-and-pop shops with chocolate from Wilbur’s factory wafting in the air. Lady Gaga has been spotted at several of these businesses while visiting this small little burg, like Dosie Dough and the General Sutter Inn.
We also have some of the oldest attractions in the country.  For example, our part of the world boasts such historic venues as the Fulton Opera House, Central Market and my personal favorite – the Intelligencer Journal. Though it’s more of a business than an attraction, this is one of the oldest newspapers in the country and it features a museum of sorts on the side of its press building along Queen Street.
The display of newspapers is located across from one of the entrances to one of Lancaster’s hottest attractions, the Lancaster County Convention Center, which successfully blends Old and New Lancaster.
I haven’t even started to mention the popular attractions in the suburbs, like the Strasburg Railroad and the National Watch & Clock Museum in Columbia, and the many shopping venues and award-winning restaurants filling our county.
Perhaps the most compelling reason why Lady Gaga will learn to love Lancaster County is the people who live and work here. Take it from a transplant of more than a decade. The caring nature of those who I have had the privilege of calling neighbors and friends is why I can’t picture myself living anywhere else.
So, with all this information, there’s only one question left to ask: Why wouldn’t she want to call Lancaster County home?
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