Texas

We had Christmas in Texas this year, with all the obvious benefits of blue sky, warmer weather and grand parent assistance for holiday child care. But I must admit that I didn’t plan on mild culture shock after living in Germany for a year and a half. Although I hadn’t quite realized it, I guess I now think that living in apartments and riding a bicycle everywhere as more or less normal. It is after all what I’ve done every day since we moved.

However, my German definition of normal is definitely not normal in Texas. Brienna’s parents have a lovely, large house in a suburb just north of San Antonio. To get anywhere at all from there you have to drive. The distances are simply too great to be done on foot and it would be frankly dangerous, as well as unpleasant, to ride a bicycle.

Fortunately there is a simply gargantuan supermarket that appears to sell just about everything, including groceries, televisions, BBQ equipment, mattresses, wedding dresses and massages about a ten minute drive away. Going virtually anyplace else seems to require getting onto the 281 freeway, which during the holiday period at least, has turned into a clogged stretch of automotive hell.

Coming at this situation with fresh eyes, I have to say my initial response is not a favorable one. The number of over-sized trucks and SUVs is ridiculous, it is impossible to walk anyplace, the freeways and housing development are generally ugly and I am just plain puzzled as to why anyone would want to live this way. I mean its one thing to be able to drive a nice car, but if you can’t even get around in it, even that one last attenuated redeeming feature evaporates.

Of course, the irony for me is that in many ways the social infrastructure of Texas is relatively close to that of Australia. After all, no one in Australia wants to live in an apartment and pretty much every Australian family has one to two cars. It is just what you do.