Here’s the second part of my trip, after New York and New Orleans. 

You can read the first article here: 

https://evas-apple.com/my-solo-trip-to-the-usa-first-part-new-york-and-new-orleans

All this trip was very spontaneous and quite unplanned, I love the feeling of freedom you get from this type of trip, but when you’re by yourself it can also be a pretty tiring experience. So I still needed some sort of final goal to reach and this goal was Texas. I wanted to go to Big Bend National Park if I found someone to go with, going alone didn’t feel very safe, especially because I have a terrible sense of direction and that would mean getting lost in the desert. Not a great idea. 

Austin

Austin is preceded by its reputation. “Let’s keep Austin weird” is its motto. Famous for its musical scene and outdoor life, and, being the new tax haven, everyone seems to love Austin nowadays. In fact, when I was in New Orleans, several people recommended me to come here, so without giving too much thought about it, I bought a Greyhound ticket and jumped on a bus aimed at Austin.

I arrived when it was already dark and the bus station looked sketchy and a bit unsafe. I was spending the first night in an Airbnb and then I’d move to a hostel the following day. 

I have to say that my first impression wasn’t great, but since it was dark and I was tired I thought I just needed a good sleep. And I was enthusiastic to have a room for myself that night. 

The Airbnb turned out to be some sort of co-living place for digital nomads, where everyone was expected to stay for at least a week, but they made an exception for me. One of the guys who lived there recommended me a nice place close by to have breakfast. I don’t remember now what it was called, but it was a cute café in a wooden building. I’ve always liked wood as a building material because it’s alive, vibrant, vulnerable. And at the same time light and flexible. It’s not like bricks and stones, so heavy and attached to the ground. Even if it’s better if it doesn’t, a wooden house always gives me the feeling that could just grow some legs and run away.

I had a cream cheese bagel and a coffee with milk and sugar for breakfast. Then I went for a little walk, grabbed my stuff, and called a cab to downtown, where my hostel was.

The Uber driver was born and raised in Austin, it felt like home, he told me. I wondered how it was to feel at home in a place like that. Or to feel at home in general.

My hostel was downtown, it was called Firehouse Hostel. When I entered I had to wait for a while before somebody attended to me, then, I was given a room code and all the necessary instructions by a sassy blond guy. My room was a bit dark but overall ok. I sadly noticed there was no common area except for the kitchen, so I decided to go to the bar downstairs. It was dark, without windows, but with a nice vibe. They were playing “The Silence” by Manchester Orchestra and there, by myself, I had a couple of pints of a delicious homemade lemonade.

I went for a walk but was pretty disappointed by the outlook of the city. So squared and grey, the air was muggy and warm. I’d never seen so many homeless people in the city centre and it seemed like nobody really cared about that.

I went to the park along the river. Probably the prettiest place downtown. There, on a floating log on the water, I saw a turtle sunbathing, with its back legs stretched out and its eyes closed, facing the sky. I sat there to read my book (Anywhere But Here by Mona Simpson) and thought that if I could be anyone else in the world, I wanted to be that turtle. In the sun, in harmony with the rest of the world. In peace.

After a pretty long afternoon by myself, I actually met several nice people in that hostel. The first were Eithan and Max, two guys from NY who invited me to play pool with them the first night. The following day we rented some scooters and went to have breakfast together, and then to explore the city a bit. Since we all had to use the toilet at a certain point, we decided to enter the Texas Capitol. That was definitely the most interesting visit to a bathroom I had in a long time.

That evening I also met Cheyenne, a girl from Florida, and other people I forgot the name. We created a little group in the kitchen that night, just talking about life while having a couple of drinks, in my case it was just chamomile tea since the bedrooms were too noisy due to the bar downstairs and it was impossible to get some sleep.

I don’t remember that much about the rest of my stay in Austin, it was only a few days, but I spent an entire day together with Cheyenne and had a great time, we went to have coffee together and then tried to go for a walk to the park, but we took the wrong path and kind of got stuck in a muddy field, so we called a taxi a went back to the hostel. That night we went to The White Horse, a very nice bar where we had Mexican food and danced with cowboys. It was a fun night.

In the following days, I also met two Canadian friends who worked in a brewery, Connor and Ryan, and another group of guys I spent an evening with. We went to a rooftop bar and there we played board games. When we were playing Jenga, the wooden tower fell on me, together with a beer glass and I fell on the floor. Right on my sacrum. For a moment I couldn’t breathe. I thought I’d never get up again. It was so painful I almost felt sick and I really felt like an idiot, I was probably the only person in the world who got injured by playing board games. In the end, I was fine, but wow, my butt hurt for a week after that!

It was then time for my next step, even if I wasn’t really sure about where I should go, but since someone I met recommended me San Antonio, I decided to go there and bought another one-way Grey Hound ticket.