Wednesday, November 13, 2013

No kangaroos in Austria !

In 2009 I spend a couple of weeks with a host family in Philadelphia.  It was a great experience and I learned a lot about the American country and the American  way of life.
I remember one evening when my host sister had some friends over.  Everyone was pretty curious about me and my country and I was asked a lot of questions. It started out really well but the more they wanted to know, the more I realised how little they knew about Austria and that they had a really stereotypical point of view.  One boy actually asked me if I had bought my clothes here in America because he thought in Austria, everyone walks around wearing traditional costumes. Another question was if in Austria we already had braces.   It seemed like "The sound of music" was their most obvious cultural reference!

Remembering my trip and all these question I was asked, I got curious. Is Austria really that unknown? So I searched the web for the most common stereotypes.


AUSTRIAN STEREOTYPES



#1 There are Kangaroos in Austria


Snow-covered hills, snowflakes softly falling on houses, trees and narrow streets, and near the forest, if you look closely, you can see some kangaroos busily searching for something to eat ... what a nice December day in Austria!

No? Austrians might laugh, but Austria gets confused with Australia way too often, simply because of the similar names of the countries. The reaction of the Austrian tourism industry was a t-shirt with a well-known yellow sign and the stroke "No kangaroos in Austria" ;)










#2 All Austrians wear Lederhosn and Dirndl



Many Austrians have traditional clothes at home and wear them for example at special occassons - but Dirdl and Lederhosen are far from being worn every day. Anyhow the "typical" Austrian in Lederhosen is often seen in Austria related commercials.
For example this stiegl commercial -->




#3 Austrians love classic music and ski all the time


Many Austrians love to ski - simply because we have so many opportunities to practice it. Especially people in the western and south regions (Vorarlberg, Tirol, Salzburg, Kärnten...), which are very mountainous, are passionate winter- sportsmen. Children are taught how to ski early. I learned to it in kindergarten and so did many of my friends. 

I´m sure many Austrians enjoy listening to classic music as well ;)





I guess every country has to deal with stereotypes. There are good ones as well as really bad ones. People don't like to overthink their first impression and that's how prejudice is created.







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