wiredvanity

A little bit more on Texas
18 March 2010

I have this urge to write a bit more about Texas. While I’m perfectly aware of the fact that my experience isn’t enough to really judge about this big state in the south, it’s kind of remarkable that the few glimpses that I got to catch somehow encouraged me to write this.

I’ve already wrote about the racist remarks of the flight attended on the Continental flight from Dallas to Austin. What I didn’t talk about was another – for a European – very weird situation. It goes something like this: while approaching Austin one of the flight attendant started to rattle through the various connecting flights one could catch there. That of course is nothing remarkable. The fact that she did call out the name and the seat number of the military officer o this flight was. It got even weirder when she cheered him on and everybody started clapping. Not sure how to react, one was very inclined to clap along because of the imaginary consequences for not complying with the crowds behaviour. A very unsettling experience.

It didn’t repeat itself, but the importance of the military got highlighted once again while boarding for the flight from Austin to Houston. At first – as usual – the flight attendant asked the first class passengers to board the aircraft, but immediately after that any military personal was asked to join the premium paying folks. Again, this behaviour is so unusual in Germany that it made think about cultural differences.

To make it a little bit worse, the attendant not only thanked us in the name off Continental Airlines, but also in the name of her family because by choosing CO we’re insuring her job – which she of course loves dearly – and food for her family. Yes, I praised the quality of service and friendliness at US, but that’s just creepy.

The three Texan airports – Dallas, Austin, Houston – that I had the pleasure to visit expressed a lot of the famous pride known to be so extensively available in the south. All of them expressed the rigorous glory of long gone days. Except maybe for Austin where the airport isn’t far from the city and it isn’t as hugely built as if there is no limitation in space.

Dallas and Houston did compensate Austin’s slight modesty without any problem. Dallas is enormous, but it’s one of the most busiest airports in the world as well. Still, it’s glory seems to be rooted in the 70s and I didn’t really like what I’ve saw. Despite it’s unnatural calmness and the incredible amount of natural light.

George Bush International Airport (Houston) was even worse. It didn’t not only scream GOP at you – I shot the photo above in Houston -, it kind of made me feel angry. Seriously, I do understand the fact that shoe-shining is only a profession as others, but the fact that I’ve seen two different shoe-shine shops at the airport and that at both a black man was shoe-shining a white man’s shoes made me angry and only cemented my prejudice against Texas.

The architecture resembled the common attitude and resembled a conglomerate of different buildings, all not very light accessible that got pushed beside each other with a seemingly function, but not concept. Everything is big and clumsy. Design follows certainly not function, but the philosophy.

So yeah, I guess Texas isn’t going to be my favourite state any time soon, but maybe that’s okay. I don’t think they want me in Texas either.