My personal tour of America has moved into its next phase. I got what I needed from my time in Nashville, even if the result wasn’t perhaps what I’d hoped going into my extended stay. I’ll spend the next couple of weeks in and around Austin, a city where I spent a summer in law school interning in the state solicitor general’s office.

As part of a reorientation drive on my first night, I drove north along Congress Avenue. That is probably the most iconic Austin vantage, with the state capitol building center framed and the city skyline in the middle distance with the river in the foreground. What struck me most was how different it was compared to my memory of it. The image in my mind had the river and the capitol building, sure, and a couple of skyscrapers—the most memorable being roughly shaped like an owl. There were a lot of cranes at that time, more cranes that I’ve ever seen in the United States. Now, there are fewer cranes and all of those buildings that were under construction almost a decade ago are completed. Austin today has a true skyline that extends east to west along the riverfront and stretches northward. The owl tower doesn’t stand out near as much, and Austin already feels than I remember. I expected that, but the visual made the pandemic-era statistics real.

During this stay I get to explore what the city is like now, how it’s changed, what’s the same, and where things might be headed. Dinner last night reminded me of one thing that’s not changed, namely that food doesn’t have to be described as spicy on the menu for it to cause me some problems. Just Texas things.