My girlfriend and I are moving to Austin, TX a week from today. It will very likely be a fairly short stay in the Texas capital. We realized a few weeks ago that we’re in kind of a unique position to live wherever we want for the upcoming couple of months. I suppose you can always “live wherever you want,” so I don’t mean to imply that people are prisoner to their current city. But relocating to a new area sometimes doesn’t make any sense at all and sometimes seems like a great idea. Our particular situation has the nice combination of a.) the lease ending at our current residence this month, b.) me having a job that requires only an internet connection and c.) her finishing the Texas bar exam (this week) and not having a job at least for a little while. As such, there is little stopping us from doing something like putting most of our possessions in storage and trying out another city for a few months. We found an ideal sublet situation in Austin that made the decision to check out a new city for a few months an easy one.
I’ve lived in Houston for nearly five years now. It’s really all I know with regards to Texas. I’ve been to Austin and Dallas a couple of times. I spent a couple of nights in El Paso this summer passing through on the drive to and from Vegas. But for all intents and purposes, the “how’s Texas?” question I occasionally get from people from back home just leave me wanting to say, “I wouldn’t know, I never leave inner-city Houston.”. There’s a big difference between the place I’ve called home since I was 21 and anyplace 20 miles away from it. You can go from chic sushi restaurants playing trendy club music, valet drivers parking Mercedes-Benzes, BMWs, and Lexuses (Lexi?), to Ford F-150s (“the Truck of Texas” as the commercials will tell you), country music, and people likely to be grossed out to the idea of eating eel.
There’s a lot more to Texas than the image people may get when someone says George W. Bush, cowboy hat, or death penalty. I’m excited to explore more of the state I’ve come to appreciate calling home during a few months in the city that I think many would claim is most suitable for the type of Texas residents least likely to identify as being a “Texan”.
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