Greetings people of cyberspace. I have recently completed my 29-day journey of Austin, San Antonio, New Orleans and Pittsburgh and am safely back in rural central Pennsyvlania that is of State College. This serialized post would not be a detailed experience of what I did throughout my trip but what I learned as I skipped from city to city.
Stereotyping Stereotypes
Before we begin, if I say the word "Texas" what would be the first things to come to your mind? My guess would be cowboys, desert, George W. Bush & rednecks. Thanks to television and the silver screen all of us just simply know how a typical Texan look like: a gun-toting, horse-riding, take-no-for-an-answer, tough guy. Well, my experience at Austin seemed to disprove any stereotype I had before. One of my acquantainces whom I met during my travels told me that "Austin is a liberal oasis smacked in the middle of a huge conservative desert." How true he is.
Throughout my five days at Austin, I didn't see anyone wearing full cowboy gear except the occasional hat & contrary to the fact, people over there do not speak with a Southern accent. If you were to meet an Austinite in any other state, you wouldn't have guessed that person to be from Texas. It was only during my second last night at Austin that I finally savored the accent from a waitress at a Mexican restaurant at SoCo but there was still a suspicion that she might come from Oklahoma or Alabama.
Besides that, people over there are very friendly (think Southern hospitality) and modern; one example would be while I was paying for my falafel at Whole Foods Market, a quite high-end supermarket that sells local and organic food, the cashier had a chat with me about my t-shirt which portrayed the post-rock band Explosions In The Sky and when we shifted to the topic of music festivals in America, he told me he had been to Coachella six times! Really made me felt like a rookie.
Fat Americans
Another stereotype that citizens of other nations like to make fun about or to express disgust is Americans are a bunch of fat and lazy sods. True. BUT this premise only holds in the southern states. I was quite shocked to see a proportional number of fat people at Austin, San Antonio & New Orleans as compared to when I went to Pittsburgh, Philadelphia and New York City; one glaring reason for this apparent quantity of large people per square mile is down to their diet.
Food in the south is the best that you can get: steaks are in abundance, hence making it their staple and almost everything that can be deep-fried will be deep-fried while up north people tend to be more health conscious and have more variety to choose from. However, the media would spin it around and generalize that all Americans are overweight. This is a hasty surmise since their diet has already become part of their lifestyle and as far as economics is concerned, demand would not diminish as long as there is cheap supply.
Throughout my five days at Austin, I didn't see anyone wearing full cowboy gear except the occasional hat & contrary to the fact, people over there do not speak with a Southern accent. If you were to meet an Austinite in any other state, you wouldn't have guessed that person to be from Texas. It was only during my second last night at Austin that I finally savored the accent from a waitress at a Mexican restaurant at SoCo but there was still a suspicion that she might come from Oklahoma or Alabama.
Besides that, people over there are very friendly (think Southern hospitality) and modern; one example would be while I was paying for my falafel at Whole Foods Market, a quite high-end supermarket that sells local and organic food, the cashier had a chat with me about my t-shirt which portrayed the post-rock band Explosions In The Sky and when we shifted to the topic of music festivals in America, he told me he had been to Coachella six times! Really made me felt like a rookie.
Fat Americans
Another stereotype that citizens of other nations like to make fun about or to express disgust is Americans are a bunch of fat and lazy sods. True. BUT this premise only holds in the southern states. I was quite shocked to see a proportional number of fat people at Austin, San Antonio & New Orleans as compared to when I went to Pittsburgh, Philadelphia and New York City; one glaring reason for this apparent quantity of large people per square mile is down to their diet.
Food in the south is the best that you can get: steaks are in abundance, hence making it their staple and almost everything that can be deep-fried will be deep-fried while up north people tend to be more health conscious and have more variety to choose from. However, the media would spin it around and generalize that all Americans are overweight. This is a hasty surmise since their diet has already become part of their lifestyle and as far as economics is concerned, demand would not diminish as long as there is cheap supply.
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