This is the good old Texas!
I happened to visit this place because a friend of mine has just bought a house here. Prices are great indeed and with the amount of money you would need for a small one-bedroom apartment in Downtown here you can easily buy a good size two-storey house with a nice backyard and a garage.
It is less than half an hour away from Downtown Austin but it is truly different.
In Austin you find hipster people grocery shopping at fancy organic supermarkets whereas in Elgin you find families filling the carts with gallons of milk, stacks of junk food and you wonder why…
The reason is that Elgin is the door to the Texan countryside, beyond which there are ranches and people living in pretty remote locations so they come shopping once a month, or so I was told.
Another difference is that whereas in Austin you can find gyms at every corner - since being fit is the new craze - here the parks get wider and they offer free courts for tennis, basketball and other sports.
It is here that you can see groups of youngsters hanging out all together after school because they all likely know each other.
The fancy and trendy boutique shops of the city are replaced here by a lot of thrift stores and second-hand markets where you can find some relics from the good old times.
In this kind of stores you can expect an old lady welcoming you and telling you the story of her ancestors and how they got to move to Texas.
These shops generally sell handmade quilts, teddy bears, accessories, furnishings and toys.
Furthermore, if you ask anyone in Austin, most people will tell you they are not originally from there and very often not even American born; in little Texan towns as Elgin instead many people living here were born and raised in town.
Elgin is a place for families and retirees because it is a quiet little community which nonetheless offers all amenities one can desire and most people who live here - except for the young ones - do not go to Austin so often.
But this is also due to the fact that this little sleepy town is not so sleepy after all: it offers some cool local hangouts for country music and it has a famous smoothies shop with a drive-through window which has long lines throughout the night.
The number one attraction here and the best one to discover the history of Texas is the Depot Museum.
This museum includes a switchboard and very old phones, old photos and local stories from Elgin through the generations and a wide variety of displays.
At the museum entrance you find some volunteers, local old ladies ready to welcome you and tell you the story of the State and of this area in particular.
The museum talks about the railroad and how this changed the trade and the history of this part of the country. It talks about slavery and the emancipation of the slaves once slavery was abolished at last.
You can see parts of old trains and learn how they worked and even buy a souvenir at the small shop at the exit.
In Elgin you can easily see people riding horses in the middle of the street among the car traffic and you can spot a nature that is typical of Texas and that you can not perceive in the city.
Fascinating but I prefer living in Downtown because I guess I am not ready for the true Texas!
