Dallas

Saturday, 30.September

Howdy Folks!

• Thanks to jetleg we wake up way too early anyway and Matthäus and I decide to take advantage of that and go for a run
• Our running route leads us through downtown and we get a bit of an impression of the city, which is still very calm and only slowly wakes up.
• The good thing is, now at 8h in the morning the temperatures are still bearable, because during the day it still has around 36 degrees (Celsius).
• For breakfast we go to the Social Club, which is located right at the border to Deep Ellum and is huge: There is a bowling hall, several slot machines, karaoke, etc., etc. – the tables are located in a huge hall, in the middle of which is a bar and in which even the many tables seem a bit lost, just as lost as we, who are sitting all alone in the huge room.
• We sit down on a classic American diner seating area and order very classic American brunch, very unhealthy, unfortunately awesome and the portions are huge
• The filter coffee comes in equally huge cups and you get free re-fills, two points I very much approve of
• together we plan our days after the wedding and we decide to do a Grand Canyon tour from Las Vegas – the flights and rental car are booked quickly
• next stop – a highlight: The Texas State Fair

• The Texas State Fair is like a huge county fair that takes place here for two weeks every year, drawing many people from all over the U.S. and even further away
• And rightly so – it is a spectacle
• Already at the entrance we are overwhelmed by impressions: Booths where you can buy food and drink alternate with booths where you can do fairground activities, like throwing cans, and in between the crowds of airily dressed people with sunglasses, Texan straw hats and cowboy boots, almost all of them holding something to eat or something to drink or a huge stuffed animal in their hands
• Right at the entrance we see a “beer garden”, which actually looks nice and the Munich side of Julian is immediately drawn to it
• So we go to the stand and not two minutes on the state fair have passed before I am addressed by the guys behind the counter on my “nothing but thieves” T-shirt – Made my day!
• We tell them that we saw them live yesterday at The Factory and the guy tells us that it’s actually called Bomb Factory, because bombs were produced there during WWII, and it’s been one of the biggest music venues in Dallas since the 90s.
• Comfortably laying back and equipped with a beer, we watch the hustle and bustle for a while, before we mix into the crowd

• We make our way to the Big Tex, a huge statue of a cowboy with a hat and without a horse, in front of which we of course take a photo – following the example of many others
• We also try a typical Texas meal: Corn Dogs, which are kind of hot dogs with cornmeal and deep fried, very tasty.

• Off we go to our absolute Must Do point, the pig race
• Around the arena are already several stands ready, all unfortunately in the blazing sun, from which there is simply no escape, when once a very small cloud pushes in front of the sun and gives us about half a minute of shade, it is applauded enthusiastically by the entire audience
• The race is a spectacle: A guy moderates the whole thing in a very animated way and the audience plays along well
• Julian: “I’ve never seen a pig race – the only other thing was the Spanferkel, how fast it rotates.”
• The pigs are much faster than I would have expected and compete in fours – the winner gets a cookie, although in the end they are all almost equally fast, so the cookie is shared between the four pigs

• After the pig race we go to the cattle area, where all kinds of animals from horses to sheep and goats are on display. There are also competitions, but their course and ranking system remains unfathomable to us. For example, a row of goats is presented to a jury by several children and young people dressed like cowboys. The jury consists of people dressed like cowboys as well (perhaps they really are cowboys?!) – the original with jeans in bell-bottom style, boots and cowboy hat – who look thoughtfully at the goats and then say a few words to a secretary noting everything down.
• Now it is time for refreshments and I get an iced tea, which is served in a huge Texan Statefair Cup with a straw, which we then keep and which actually proves to be practical on our following road trips.
• A mother buys a small bottle of water and gives the open bottle to her child, who turns the bottle upside down and empties the entire contents onto the floor. The mother with a horrified look: “Why did you do that? I just bought it!” Julian, standing behind it and just taking a sip from his bottle, does his best to not laugh out loud.
• We look into a glass house where there is a Sustainable Agriculture exhibition where we learn how plants, mainly vegetables, can be cultivated in greenhouses in a more environmentally friendly way – very exciting.
• We pass a park full of dinosaur statues, one of which is called “Sauroposeidon” with translation Lizard-Earthquake-God. Julian: “Yeah yeah, the God has 50 jurisdictions and this is number 49.”

• We find our way into a huge hall where you can buy everything imaginable from barbecues to garden sofas and garden bars to beds. Matthäus’s comment on this: “Here you can furnish your entire house – all that’s missing is that you can buy the house itself.”
• Our path continues through a huge area with large pavilions that remind us of Soviet Union Park in Moscow. Each pavilion is dedicated to one of the states to which Texas has belonged over time. Inside the pavilions are car displays and the rooms are chilled down to freezing temperatures (especially as opposed to the hot temperatures outside) in good American fashion.
• The next program item is the dog show: Here everything evolves around dogs, and they perform tricks such as somersaults, high and long jumps and Frisbee catching. The trainers make a great show out of it and the audience is enthusiastic.

• Finally, we take a look at an exhibition about Dia de los Muertos.
• As soon as you enter the exhibition space, you feel like you’re in another world: the room is slightly darkened and filled with ceiling-high sculptures representing death, stalls selling handmade items, and colorful scarves and garlands hanging from the ceiling in between.
• It’s colorful, exciting and loud. On upper floors there are galleries where artworks on the theme of Dia de los Muertos are displayed.

• Back to the hotel and off to Michi and Julia’s pre-wedding reception at a small brewery. We taste our way through the beer selection and meet other wedding guests, which is very nice.
• There are some little games, like the bird game: everyone gets a card with a bird on it wrapped around it and “has to find the person who has the same bird”. I am lucky and my partner is very ambitious, which is why we have already finished the game within a quarter of an hour.
• There is food, but we realize so late that by then everything is already eaten. Luckily for us, there are still pretzels and pizza later.
• At some point the event location closes and we are kicked out. So we sit down outside in a small group for a beer or two before we order an Uber home.

Sunday, 1. Oktober

Julia und Michis Wedding  

• Not quite as early and not quite as fit we get up today. We decide to go for breakfast/lunch to the Mexican place that our Mexican cab driver from the airport recommended to us. Julian looks up the opening hours and we are a bit surprised, because it is open on Sunday from 11 am to 3 pm. However, we can’t complain, because we didn’t get up before eleven anyway and the wedding starts at three, so the opening hours are perfect for us.
• It’s totally nice with a covered area between two houses where the food tables are set up. I make my entrance with a limbo through the half-open garage door and promptly get dizzy. The ladies at the front desk are very nice and it turns out we’re super lucky again: Every Sunday from eleven to three there is an all-you-can-eat brunch buffet. There are a lot of different Mexican treats, which, unfortunately- due to capacity problems, we do not manage to try all. The Mexican coffee is delicious, as is the lemonade with basil.

• There is a super hot sauce that has the handwritten label “El pito de diablo” and we, with our non-existent knowledge of Spanish, wonder what that means.
• Julian writes to a Spanish friend and promptly the answer comes back: The devil’s dick

• We sit together on a round table with a Texan, who tells (and also looks like) that he comes here regularly, because the food is so good.
• He recommends us a number of sights in Texas, which we unfortunately can not visit all, because we leave Dallas on Monday already again.
• The guy is at all a bit curious, he has a T-Shirt with two Guns on it and speaks very slooowly to us, a bit as if we were a stupid or unable to understand him otherwise
• Still, we enjoy the food and coffee and are quite happy to have eaten so well, because the next time we get food will be in the evening
• We take a shower, get dressed and make our way to the church
• The entrance is very long (after all, Julia has 5 bridesmaids and Michi 6), but very touching and the mass rather short, but also very beautiful
• Afterwards we take an Uber (by foot it would take 50 minutes, by car 10 minutes – so much for the pedestrian friendliness of Dallas) to the wedding location, a place in our favorite neighborhood Deep Ellum.
• The location is very artsy, matching the whole neighborhood, a little bit run down but stylish at the same time, full of graffiti, artfully decorated and very cozy – it fits perfectly to Julia and Michi
• We are one of the first to arrive at the location, as we drove straight from the church – some others have obviously stopped off at the hotel.
• It’s quite warm in the sun, but we find a great spot in the shade and get to talk a bit with other guests, including a scientist who knows Michi from his PhD in London and an uncle of Julia’s who runs a ranch in Texas – this leads to an interesting conversation: while the uncle, who runs a purely agricultural business, talks about his projects with ancient grain that has something to do with Moses and Jesus (what exactly I don’t remember), and about rattlesnakes that they have in abundance, the scientist friend asks him interested detailed questions about cultivation, fertilizing and farming, and the answers are discussed from their different perspectives
• Shortly after we meet a cousin of Julia, who says “Yeah, the part of the family Julia is from is great, but my part of the family is a bit crazy” – but he is very nice himself and we enjoy our chat with him.
• Benjamin, Julia’s brother, apparently has a company with which he rents (or sells?), among other things, rotating photo stands, which seem to be very IN right now – you can imagine it like this: As a group, you can stand on a round platform, around which a camera the size of an IPAD, mounted on a kind of selfie stick at the bottom of the platform, rotates and shoots a kind of 3D photo (i.e. a series of photos from all perspectives, which are then strung together) – this really seems to be THE thing at the moment, because we see masses of these turntables in Las Vegas the next day

• The dancing happens later inside, spirits are high, it is a great party and just when we really get going, we are kicked out of the location
• So we move on: everyone runs after Julia and Michi to a loft, which is a kind of artist’s loft that came together with the location.
• However, our group is still too big, so we are still on the move- to a bar, which is cozy and full on Deep Ellum style
• We chill there for a while, before we – now already as a smaller group- move back to the loft

• The loft has a special atmosphere: right when you enter there’s a kitchen, which then turns into a huge, high room, which is very sparsely furnished, making the whole thing look very cold and lost – there’s a (not so inviting) sofa in one corner and a long table with rolling chairs, which looks like a meeting space, in the middle, upstairs there’s another floor, which protrudes gallery-like into the room and has a bit of a cozier feel to it
• We have a pretty good chat with another cousin of Julia’s, who also turns out to be very nice, until a second cousin or something comes along who tells us a lot about how Julia’s grandmother was his grandmother’s sister and how great it is how they’re all family and how great their family isn’t, and how they’re all so super supportive of each other – in between interrupting his monologue here and there and wildly hugging Julia’s cousin and telling him “I love you, aah our family is so smart”
• At one point, the second cousin blurts out, “Why isn’t Texas sunk in the Gulf of Mexico yet? Because Oklahoma sucks.”
• We also learn from him that the Texas flag is the only flag of an American state that is allowed to be flown at the same height as the USA flag, because Texas was its own state for a while – a certain patriotism is noticeable
• As he moves on, I ask Julia’s cousin, “Who was that?! What was his name again?” And he replies, shrugging his shoulders, “Some cousin of mine. And no idea.”
• Julian randomly asks late at night: “What kind of sound does a deer make?” Matthäus: “Klonk – when it runs into your car.”
• Otherwise, not many more clever things are said, we walk home and off to bed.

Monday, 2.Oktober

„Its 4 Dollars, ah and did I mention the additional service costs of 40 Dollars?”

• Getting up, us in zombie mode
• Julian at 11h, when he wants to assure us that we won’t need that long to the airport anyway: “It’s eh…..(looks at his watch)….Monday”
• We walk towards the John F. Kennedy Memorial, because JFK was shot here on November, 22 1963.
• As we do so, we pass a huge Cattle Statue, actually many bronze sculptures of a group of cows moving down the river along with two cowboys – the 40 cows and 2 cowboys make up the largest bronze monument in the world and are on display in a park

• The JFK Memorial turns out to be plain, but also very impressive and is not far from the spot where JFK was shot, which is marked with a white cross in the middle of the road – the road is still busy, by the way, so taking a photo with the cross is a not so smart idea, which nevertheless doesn’t keep some people from trying

• We, as well as half of the wedding party, had the brilliant idea to visit the Sixth Floor Museum today, which is located on the spot where the sniper was, i.e. JFK’s assassin
• The idea is brilliant because the museum is closed on Mondays
• Instead, we move to a brunch place, where Matthäus and I also have our Talking Hands Meeting – which, however, turns out to be very noisy and impractical for meetings
• On the way back to the hotel we see some houses with owners that have gone full on on Halloween decorations, Julian is particularly fascinated by a really creepy looking life-size woman with black hair on a swing – “Boah, if you pass by there at night…”, Julian says and I shudder at the thought
• Off we go to the airport, where it turns out to be more difficult than expected to find the right counter for Frontier, but we finally check in our luggage successfully
• The flight to Las Vegas is super delayed
• Shortly after takeoff the announcement comes: “We are going to turn off the cabin light- if you need light you can turn on your personal one which I think you can do without” (?!!)
• I look out the window and notice that each of the Frontier planes has a motto animal, which is then depicted in multiple versions on the aircraft, including on the wings – on the neighboring plane I tell Matthäus and Julian enthusiastically it is “a walrus, just like on our plane!”

• It turns out that it is not a walrus, but an owl (how did I get that confused) and on closer inspection I agree with Julian and Matthäus with their assessment, which of course opens up room for jokes like “The ancient Greeks already knew the walrus – the walrus is after all the heraldic animal of Athens”, “yes exactly, carrying a walrus to Athens”.