Christmas in Texas

25th December 2017, three school friends left College Station for Austin, while the entire city was getting warm in their homes with families and the fire in the fireplace burning bright. A roadtrip to Austin.

College Station is like this miniature weirdo, which has the Texas A&M University at its heart and few happy people running in and out of it every now and then. The city has nothing other than the university spirit that is visible only when the university is all hands-and-legs-spread-out with activity bustling in and around it. On days like Christmas eve and the day of Christmas, when the university is all sleeping, the city is near to dead. So here we were,a set of international folks in a foreign country,  three long lost school friends, out in a car heading towards the city of Austin. Shinjan had come down from Orlando, Florida and we were all set to leave College Station by 11:30 in the morning.

Our first stop was at the Zilker Park. We got down and the first thing that caught my eye before everything else was this family who had come out with their three legged dog, whom they called Henry, as far as I can remember, for a Christmas tour. I could not help notice how gentle they were and how excited they were to share the photos of Henry. As I stood there waiting for the boys to fix the locks of the car, the family had managed to exchange few smiling faces with me. I couldn’t help ask them if I could capture a moment of theirs and they happily agreed.

A moment later we found ourselves headed towards a spring and we were excited to find out the source of the water. To our surprise in minutes we found an enclosed area that was presumably the source of the water in the spring. I was debating inside my head whether it was a hotspring or not because of my background with Rajgir’s hot-springs, where I learnt that an area which is prone to volcanic activity can be a source of geothermal energy.

I started looking at the rock structures in the area, but could not make out much of them. I am no geologist after all! As an answer to my thoughts, I heard Shinjan read from a board somewhere that the normal temperature of the water was around 24 deg Celcius, which was way warmer than the temperature outside that day. Maybe it was a hot-spring afterall. The rocks around the spring and the bushes here and there added on to the beauty of the place and we were so intrigued by the undulating topography of the spring, that we did not leave one rock un-climbed. The spring and the rocks and the bushes around gave way to a meadow. It was like a small hill-top that looked out to the sky-scrapers and evidently the skyline in a distance. We could barely leave the place without capturing few moments there..

By around 2 in the afternoon we were ready to grab some quick lunch, which did not remain quick in the end. Aniruddha’s GPS benevolently chose Chinatown in Downtown Austin for our lunch place and we found ourselves waiting for a table for three in no time. The place was pouring with the joviality of the Christmas Day and we had to literally squeeze our way in. The bar was lit with welcoming faces while the rest of the restaurant was booming with the light from hanging lamps that reflected every color from their sharp edged crystals. We ordered our favorites while Shinjan was mesmerized by the Star Wars illustrations on the walls and the petite Asian girl who served us food and drinks.  He bid her farewell when she last handed over our fortune cookies and we soon left. A quick graffiti on a random wall in the city hit his eyes once again and he couldn’t wait to get clicked with it.

With this we left. However, our love for Graffiti found us at the Graffiti Park where anyone anywhere could get themselves clicked with the colors at their feet and the Austin Capitol at the backdrop. Amidst all the colors, I saw a happy face approach me. She wore a pair of jigsawed swede leggings and  a graphic long coat with a yellow beanie, a miniature backpack of the same yellow shade and a pair of brown boots. She was all toothy and bushy haired and she blinked at me through her round glasses and asked me to click her with her friends the same the same photo that everybody wanted there. I helped her capture her favorite moment and here is what she helped us with…

 

Maybe she did look like Professor Trelawny a little deal.

Our phones had been our little maps over the city throughout the day and we still needed them alive till we reached home, and they were soon about to die. Thus, before their deaths arrived, we left the city. There were still loads to see and tonnes of moments to capture, but surely Time is one cruel monster. On our way back, we grabbed a bottle of wine and some beer bottles to celebrate our meet on the day of Christmas.

Of course, getting rid of the cork off the wine bottle was an entire different episode.

All our phones died at midnight as we passed out on the bed and Shinjan on the floor. A Christmas well spent.