Posted by Rick Denney on December 16, 2003 at 15:27:01:
In Reply to: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Photo Test posted by Mary Ann on December 16, 2003 at 14:29:40:
Let's see. There's Gruene (that's Green to the locals). There's New Braunfels, where you can still buy real lederhosen in a real store. There's Fredericksburg, home of the Nimitz Museum and a lot of, um, visitor-specific stuff. There's Boerne, now just about a suburb of San Antonio. These towns pretty much ring the Texas Hill Country in along and west of a line from San Antonio to Austin.
But that's just the center of a larger area of German and east European settlement about a century ago. South of San Antonio you'll find towns like Czestohova. Many of the towns with Hispanic names have larger German populations in them than Hispanic, such as Llano and dozens of others. It wasn't too long ago that there were parts of the countryside around New Braufels where the older folks still spoke German in their homes.
Even San Antonio has huge German roots. The fancy neighborhood south of downtown is called the King William district--that's Kaiser Wilhelm to you--and was originally settled by wealthy German traders in the late 19th Century. San Antonio celebrated German-American Day until WWII. In Austin, you can still drink a beer and listen to polka music at Scholz's Garden, and you'll probably be sitting down table from a few high-ranking politicians.
When I lived in that area, I played in the Thursday-night Wurst Band at Scholz's Garden, and in San Antonio I played in the Sons of Hermann Lodge band for a little while. And the TubaMeisters played pretty regularly at the Beethoven Home and Garten. And pretty regularly for Wurstfest held every November in New Braunfels. There's about as much polka-band activity around there as anywhere outside the Old Northwest (i.e. Midwest).
TubaRay can add much more, and so can Wade.
And the local Hispanic music is strongly influenced by the German polka style, complete with oompah bass lines and accordions.
Just pull out your Atlas, and look up the triangle roughly formed by U.S. 290, I-10, and I-35. That's the heart of the Hill Country, which extends north and south from that area a good ways.
Rick "who'll be back in San Antonio at least twice in the Spring" Denney