Texas - boot scootin', toobin' and BBQn'

Texas is bigger France. So say quite a few bumper stickers and souvenir t-shirts on sale throughout the state. That may be the case, but with less than half the population of France, a large part of the vast state is made up of useless nothingness, barren land covered in shrubs that doesn't seem to be used even for farming. Those were our observations during the 7 hours on I10, the interstate highway that takes you from Southern New Mexico to the Texas Hill Country, where we saw nothing - even fast food outlets were few and far between.

Apart from the wide expanse of nothingness, the other notable part about the Texas highways has been the confirmation of one fairly odd stereo-type. The street signs, including the big Welcome to Texas sign at the state border, are indeed riddled with bullet holes. I'm not quite sure how the bullet holes get there. My theory was that they are shot by drunken hooligans leaning out of the car as they pass the signs. Kate's slightly less scary theory is that they are used by people on the adjoining properties as target practice. Although that means they are shooting at the road, which is actually not less scary at all.

Fortunately, once you arrive in Hill Country, the area around Austin and San Antonio, all that changes very quickly. As we arrived, Hurricane Alex had just made landfall, and Texas was being doused by torrential rain. With little to no change in the temperature, it made for ferocious humidity, but it also went some way to explaining why the shrub and dirt give way to green lawns and fruit orchards. It's peach season at the moment, and just about every house we passed had a sign at the front offering buckets of fresh peaches to passers by.

The Hill Country is where guide books tell you to find 'the real Texas', and there are indeed plenty of people in cowboy hats and boots, big cars and dance halls. But that is where the stereotypes just about end. These towns are popular weekend get aways for couples and families from the cities, so for every cowboy hat there is an antique store, and those boots mainly walk around wine tasting bars and bed and breakfasts.

The first thing that struck me, for obvious reasons, is that the entire region is overwhelmingly dominated by its German heritage. I didn't even know that Germans settled Texas, but it turns out that they did, and they left plenty of evidence behind them. The towns have names like Fredericksburg and Gruene (pronounced Green), and streets like Eichen Strasse. 'Wurst and Kraut' are on every menu, and in Gruene there is even an annual 'Wurstfest', held in the Wursthalle.

Having said all that, this is no Leavensworth (the Bavarian town near Seattle), which tries to capture and replicate German culture. The Texas hill towns are self consciously unique, they simply have German heritage.

Still in search of the real Texas, we had to check out the Gruene Dance Hall. The dance hall is the centre of the community in these towns, and the Gruene Dance Hall claims to be the oldest in Texas. Inside it was much as the name suggests, a big hall dedicated to music and dancing. The bar at the front served $2.50 beers, while the packed crowd enjoyed a live country music dance, most of them still wearing the big hats and boots. I had hoped to see line dancing, but I'm told in Texas its more about the two step, and there were lots of couples getting their dance on. With old car number plates and street signs hanging from the walls, wooden floorboards and a pool table tucked in the corner, you couldn't have gotten a much more iconic American bar.

From Hill Country we headed to Austin, the officially proclaimed capitol (that's how they spell it here) of Texas, and the self proclaimed capitol of live music. That is all well and good, but, as ever, the first order of business was to find a good place to watch Germany play (and embarrass, as it turned out) Argentina in the World Cup. Some goggling turned up Cuatro, a bar near the university, as the home of soccer in Austin, and the meeting place for the German community to watch the World Cup. So off we went.

After the game it was almost an appropriate time to have a beer, and I was certainly in the mood to stick around and celebrate, so we decided to stay at the same bar to watch the upcoming Paraguay v Spain match. In the build up to the game we got talking to a couple, Erin and Mateo, who were there to support Spain. Americans have been almost universally friendly to us, and these guys were no exception.

Kate asked them what the typical thing to do on July 4 (the next day) was, and they told us they usually just 'float the river'. Floating the river means hiring a couple of tire inner tubes, packing a cooler full of beer (the cooler gets its own tube) and floating down a river for a couple of hours, drinking the beer and making merry. Australians who have visited South East Asia might recognize as a favorite activity in Laos too.

Extending American hospitality to new heights, Erin and Mateo kindly invited us to come and float the river with them and their friends on July 4, an invitation we were very happy to take up.

So on July 4 we headed to their place, in San Marcos, a town outside Austin that is built around a university campus, and after the typical setting up delays that reminded me very much of trying to get out on the BBQ boat in Sydney, we headed to the river. Its a pretty organized set up, with a fleet of those typical yellow school buses on hand to carry people up river, where they drop in and start the two to three hour float back to the car park.

You can probably just about picture it from there, but there were two unexpected things. Firstly, there are turtles all along the side of the river, and secondly, in parts of the river there were rapids. Nothing that would really bother you in a canoe or kayak, but from tube level its a bit different. The technique, as I learned the hard way, is to make sure your bum doesn't hang below the bottom of the tube. There are some pretty sharp rocks down there.

With the sun coming out, they beers cold, and all of our group proving to be greet company, it was one of the best days we've had in America, and we weren't done yet.

Once the tubing was done, we headed back to Erin and Mateo's place for a BBQ, some more beers, and even a quick game of basketball. My only real contribution to basketball was to make up the numbers and then complain about the massive blister developing on my bare feet (which is still there, by the way) but it was fun.

Since then, back in Austin, we've taken in some of the famous live music, which really does go on in pretty much every bar in town, and had some of the best meals ever.

BBQ is a way of life down here, but it is not quite what we know as BBQ in Australia. While people do BBQ at home, there are also many restaurants dedicated to serving the best BBQ in town. At these places, there is one large fire pit where the food is cooked over hot coals. I haven't asked, but I'm pretty sure a gas BBQ would not be tolerated here. The meat is basted in BBQ sauce and then whole slabs of ribs, beef brisket and sausages are thrown onto the pit.

We ate at Salt Lick last night, one of the area's most famous BBQ restaurants. BBQ lore decrees that the meat does not taste right from a brand new pit, so before a pit is serviceable, it needs to be used for a while. At Salt Lick, they refurbished the giant BBQ pit recently, and for an entire year they cooked on it every night and donated the food to the homeless, before it was ready for restaurant use. I don't know why that was necessary, but I can't argue with it, because the food was amazing. A huge plate of meat, with a small side of kraut, potato salad and pickles (you can see the German influence here pretty clearly too).

That is enough Texas for now. We are headed back to Cuatro in an hour or so to watch Germany take on Spain. For those of you not following the soccer blog, let me simply give you this tip. Whoever wins this semi will win the World Cup.