For New People in Texas: What do you miss most now that you live in Texas (San Antonio: hotel, college)

[Muhnay]

I have moved from Texas many times.. each time I miss what I know.. like how the system works in Texas. Each state has its little quirks, I happen to know and understand the ones in Texas.. everything Else I don't miss.. why.. well because Texas is in my soul, it runs though my veins.. no matter where I go I have always taken Texas with me.

[Saintmarks]

As a Georgia native in the DFW area, I find much to be the same, have adjusted pretty well. The biggest difference is in the geography. Miss the rolling hills, the huge trees especially pine trees, the aforementioned azaleas and dogwoods.

I went to a retreat center near Tyler last year and felt like I had gone home! So now anytime I need a fix, I can drive a couple of miles east and be home.

Even though I didn't live in the GA mountains, I miss them terribly. Less than 3 hours from Atlanta you could be in the heart of the Great Smokey Mountains. A little over 4 hours south and you could be on a white sand FL panhandle beach. Drive the same distance any direction from Dallas and you are in pretty much what you just left behind.

Ditto the basements as well.

Trying to think what I will miss in TX when I do get back to GA and it will be the people. Have met great folks here.

[Foreverking]

Originally Posted by wannabeaTexan

Only lived here for a week so far...but I don't miss anything from Seattle at this point.

you will

[Foreverking]

I misssed
not being tailgated
fir trees and pine trees
Mountains, volcanoes
ground cover ferns
wet winters
80 degree summers
speaking English to almost everybody, even Spanish speaking people.
higher pay
Not having to see that darn star everywhere I looked
driving 200 miles and the scenery changes
Great coffee shops
very low humidity in the summer
a road system that's not made up by crazy people

[Back2TX]

I moved to east TX almost 4 months ago from Louisville, KY. I will miss the beautiful horse farms... the excitement of Derby... the variety of restaurants (greek, indian, thai)... my basement... the color of autumn leaves there...a yard of no mosquitos or fire ants. But if I were to list what I missed about TX while living in KY for 5 yrs... the list would be forever long. It is SO GOOD to be back in TEXAS!!!!

[CalGal953]

What I miss about California:

* Incredible diversity!!!
* Beautiful, incredibly varied landscape
* Progressiveness
* Environmentalism
* Health-conscious mindsets
* So much to do, at all times of day and night, just about anywhere in the state!
* Sometimes, stores and restaurants have their doors open because of the mild, beautiful weather.
* Plenty of sidewalks and opportunities for exercise. Almost every weekend when I lived in Rancho Cucamonga I walked up the street to eat at a restaurant or go to a store.

What I don't miss about California

* Traffic of course
* The smog in L.A. and the Inland Empire
* Political correctness is sometimes taken too far
* The ghetto areas in the cities
* Cost of living

What I like about Texas

* Cost of living
* Diversity -- I've tried Philippine, Vietnamese, German, Brazilian, Indian, Thai, Mediterranean, Japanese, and Korean food for the first time here
* Varied landscape -- I've seen the mountains and deserts in the west, the plains in the north, the beaches in the south, the swamps in the east, and the Hill Country.
* Things to do, such as Six Flags, the Riverwalk, Deep Ellum, and the hike-and-bike trails at the lake near my house (provided they aren't washed out like they were when we had the ceaseless rain in late spring/early summer '07).
* Texas leads the nation in wind power.

What I don't like about Texas

* The climate. I don't mind the heat, but I can't stand humidity, and the winters are way too cold!!! Not to mention that, in the summer, they have the A/C jacked up so high in the summer that it feels like you're walking from an oven into a freezer.
* Style over substance. "Our state capitol building is taller than the capitol in DC." "Texas is the only state that can legally fly its flag side by side with the U.S. flag at the same height." What point are you trying to make?
* Food portion sizes at restaurants are so huge that when I go out to eat with my boyfriend we either have to get "to go" boxes or we just share one dish.
* The "everything's bigger" mentality. I fail to see why a big house and a big car (save for road trips, business, and moving a lot of stuff) are necessary.
* Other than the aforementioned wind power, there is total disregard for the environment, which leaves a lot of the landscape downright unattractive. West Central Texas, and I've driven through there, is an eyesore with all those oil refineries, and the beaches in Galveston and Corpus Christi are a major letdown with trash all over the place. I've also noticed that tap water in Texas tastes quite worse than tap water in California.
* The "small town" mentality. Here in DFW, the whole area is pretty much a ghost town after 10 P.M., with only a few restaurants and clubs still open.
* Ignorance, such as thinking California will fall into the ocean when the San Andreas is really a transform fault, meaning the plates scrape along each other's sides.
* Pretentiousness: feeling they have to show off their big houses and big cars. The Dallas Morning News even ran a series in 2005: "The Price of Prosperity".
* Not many opportunities to exercise.
* I have also never seen so few sidewalks in my life when we moved here.

[TexasHorseLady]

Wow, you really DO hate Texas, CalGal953 (though, reading your history, I suspect you arrived here, dragged all unwilling by your parents, already hating it no matter what it is). I wholeheartedly hope that you get your wish and get to move back to California (which may be a let down to live in given how high on a pedestal you've held it all these years).

I'm really surprised that DFW shuts down after 10:00 p.m. When I was living there some 45 years ago, granted, there was only one place that stayed open all night, but when I moved back for a while in 1972, there were many places that stayed open very late. (Way past 10:00 p.m.) Clearly since then the clock has been turned back and we're back to the 1960's as far as that goes.

No opportunities to exercise. Well, first, you make your own opportunities in this regard - you do actually have to get out and do it. (I could, on my 55 acres, claim there are no opportunities to exercise if I wanted to excuse myself from having to take responsibility for it.) However, in Austin (and, I remember, in the Dallas area) there are plenty of hike and bike trails in and outside of the city. If you want a gym, there's lots of them. What exactly are you meaning by this?

No one really thinks that California will fall into the ocean. That's a joke, a very old joke. I think it was originally made up by a stand-up comic decades ago - one from, guess where? California.

Austin, Texas, was green way back when green wasn't cool. They have been in the forefront of environmentalism (including a LOT of rebates for installing environmentally friendly features in your home - retrofitting older homes as well as encouraging building newer ones). We've had major rainwater collection system companies doing good business here for more than a couple of decades.

Now, I agree with you that the stores and theaters could stand to have the AC turned not quite so cold.

[Pontificator]

I am a mostly life-long Texan who took an 8-year sojourn in the Greatland, Alaska that is. I maintained a dual citizenship, however, and the Alamo still makes me cry.

What I miss about Alaska is......drive through espresso stands!! Yep, got hooked, and oh, what a vice!

And yeah, the turquoise rivers weren't too shabby, either.

[autotech4dallas]

I haven't relocated to Texas yet, but when I do, what I will miss most about Oklahoma is the hospitality of the many friendly people I have met in my lifetime. Every time I leave Texas after visiting Dallas since 2003, I want to cry every time as I drive back to Oklahoma. I'm not saying that I won't get homesick after relocating to Dallas, but I will adapt very quickly.

[traderjk]

You people sound like you really don`t like Texas at all. I have heard that Texans were good people, according to what I have read here, sounds like they are jerks.