San Antonio

I know it's almost a month ago, but I couldn't not tell you about my trip to San Antonio together with a whole bunch of international exchange students. It was soo much fun. To be honest, I was a little scared that the weather would suck totally and turn this trip into a wet and rainy horror, as it has been raining the day before from morning all through the night. Yet, we were lucky and the sun actually came out for a while when we were in San Antonio, whereas it has been raining all day in Austin.
San Antonio is very touristy and I have to admit that I like Austin better.
First, we went to the Museum fof Texas History. Since the 1830s there have been a lot of Germans immigrating to the US and starting a new life in Texas. Mostly, they were given land for free and did not have to pay taxes for the first couple of years. Texas wanted to create a state of its own, build up an army and have its land settled, and the Germans wanted to escape hunger and poverty in Germany, create a new community in a better environment, promising a healthy climate, good farming conditions and a lot of fellow Germans.
What I didn't know was, that there were also alot of other nationalities who came to settle in Texas over time. Texas thus pretty much represents a concentrated image of the American melting pot.
After that we went to a Mexican market. I honestly expected something authentic. Real Mexican culture, I guess, whatever that might be. What we got was again the tourist-version of a Mexican market. Every souvenir shop had the same things. Brightly colored dishes and figurines, cheap jewelry and decorations. Very weird. :) Finally, we went to the Alamo. There, the Texans faught for their independence in 1836, won, and since then Texas has been independent from Mexico. It's a nice little fort/chapel. Even though it's a lot younger than most of the European ruins of churches, castles and convents, it looks exactly the same. The tiles at the wall are covered by a glass plate, so you can see the brightly colored decorations but not touch and - please forbid - destroy them. They were also evry serious about taking pictures but I guess that's just normal. It was very interesting, though. But again, the souvenior shop seemed to be much bigger than the chapel itself.