US trip of a (sport nerds) lifetime..: Dallas/Texas Review - an overdose of American flavor with a little bit patriotic overkill....

Dallas...known for a TV show, known for the Dallas Mavericks and Dallas Cowboys, where everyone wears cowboy boots and has a colt around his waist. Everything is supposed to be bigger, more intense and more impressive than anywhere else....those are the prejudices you have of Texas when going there for the first time....and all of them are right !!!

Just a couple of examples why everything is really bigger in texas:

When regular roads in the US have 5 lanes in each direction, the road from the airport to my hotel had 9(!!!!) lanes all the way.

When regular cars are anyway bigger than anywhere else on this planet: EVERYONE has a dodge RAM here in texas. For people from outside of the US: A dodge ram is a car that someone in your area would at most buy when he either:

a) was forced to do so with a gun to his head
b) owns a petrol station
c) needs to transport 4 chopped down trees, 17 pigs, 45 other people and... another dodge ram....at the same time every single day of the year
d) is of texonian decent and moved to your country

That is a Dodge Ram:

Riding on the streets here reminded me a lot of my favorit Simpsons scene, because this exactly the game that the texans are playing with their cars:

I wonder why they dont use Dodge RAM`s in Walmarts here instead of a regular cart.

Speaking of Wal Mart...I have been to an Ultra Wall Mart yesterday. For the Europeans among my readers, wal mart is a supermarket chain and they have huuuggeeee stores comparable to Metro or Carrefour (just....you know that a carrefour looks like a gas station supermarket in Afganistan in late spring compared to Wal Marts).

I grew up in a town with like 700 people living there on approximately 5km² of space. Now I asked one of the people working there in the Wal Mart I was and he said that 800 people are there usually at all times (it is open 24/7) on around 4km² of space (inlcuding parking lot)!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! Just to put that into perspective: IF EVERY CITIZEN OF MY HOMETOWN WOULD GO SHOPPING IN THAT WAL MART AT THE SAME TIME WE COULD EASILY DO THAT, BUT HEY IN ORDER TO GET FRESH EGGS WE MIGHT HAVE TO WALK FROM ONE END OF MY HOMETOWN TO THE OTHER :D :D :D

I can imagine a couple going shopping there: "Oh honey, I forgot to get the milk" she says "oh alright, well I`ll drive home with the kids then already, see them grow up, go to their prom night and afterwards we ll pick you up again"

Wal Mart

When during a usual sport event the national anthem is sang and 2 or 3 Army dudes hold the star spangled banner into the air this is a great moment. In Dallas .... well you can guess it already...things are a bit bigger:

But lets get down to the rating for Dallas/Texas:

Food and drinks

Texas is quite famous for its BBQ`s and for quite a considerable influence of Tex-Mex "cuisine". So thats what I ate all day long, fat, unhealthy but delicious food

Steak and Chees "sandwich"

Nachos with...i dont know, peppers, some meat and meat on top of the meat, cheese and a bit more melted cheese on the not yet melted cheese...

Drinks... well I went to a college party here of people I bumped into at the cowboys game and had too many of them....that party was... well no I might tell everyone in private but that party was the most crazy thing I have ever experienced in terms of parties so far. What happens on University of Dallas parties stays there :D Pictures still exist but maaayyybee after the trip I might disclose some stuff like at the end of the Hangover movies.

Foods and drinks: 6/10 ... nothing really too amazing but I didnt really have it too much of a chance as well to be honest

People:

People from Texas are loud, proud of their state and always on the brink of being very cocky about being from Texas and being a cowboys fan. Now I just wanted to have a good time so I integrated and pretended to have the same opinion (my god I must have yelled 14.000 times a fake " GO COWBOYS") in recent days. I liked people from Chicago more to be honest but still, people here at least unique which is always a good thing

people: 4/10

Sports scene:

I love it when people are over the top proud of their teams, go crazy whenever they can and support them no matter what. Welcome to Dallas then. Dallas is clearly dominated by football fans, the cowboys are, even though not being very good recently, by far the most famous team here. The Mavericks and Stars are quite a bit behind them.

Watching my very first football game was great fun but the more often I go to sport events here the more differences I see between the fan culture in Europe and the US, but that will be a seperate post.

After not believing how lucky I was to see a Derrick Rose gamewinner... I saw another one in Dallas.

Again, in the last seconds the home town team I rooted for scored and won the game. Its crazy again how the whole stadium errupts...

Besides that I watched 2 Mavericks games which was a kind of a dream of myself to see Dirk play in front of his home crowd. I had pretty good seats and well....it was just amazing. He is by far the most famous sports person in town, 80% of the people in the arena were wearing a Dirk jersey so I did fit right in there :)

Sports rating: 10/10 the cowboys game was awesome, seeing Dirk live again was just breathtaking

Total Dallas Rating: 5/10

The city itself and the people here are below average I have to say. There is not much you can do here as a tourist, not much of a "downtown" area as in Chicago. Wouldnt there have been the amazing football game and Dirk in town, the rating would have even been much worse.

Will I come back to Dallas? Probably...but only because of the Mavericks, besides that Dallas doesnt have as much to offer as Chicago had or Miami and New York will have to offer.

Following a couple of more pictures: