Why people confuse Austria with Australia

President Bush was not the first (and for sure not the last) to confuse Austria with Australia. It seems that it is not so easy to distinguish the seven letters of the word Austria from the similar combination of seven plus two letters within Australia.

I am not sure if this term exits, but I would call Austria a syntactical enclave of Australia.

An enclave a territorial unit (a country, e.g.) enclosed completely within a foreign territory, like the State of the Vatican City or the Republic of San Marino, both completely surrounded by Italy. Syntactics on the other hand deals with the formal relations between signs. The sequence of characters in the word Austria is completely lying within the "boundaries" of the word Australia.
In a way Austria can be considered as a kangaroo word of Australia: A word that carries other words within itself. Per definition the kangaroo word not only contains letters of the other word in the same order but the two words also have the same meaning and etymology. Well, this is definitely not true for Austria and Australia.

The name Australia is derived from the Latin auster (= south). Since ancient Roman times people were looking for the legendary "terra australis incognita" – the "unknown land of the south".

On the other hand we have Austria, which also sounds like a Latin word, but originates from the Old High German word Ostarrichi – the "eastern march", first mentioned in 996. (The High German ôstar means "eastern"). The name was Latinized in 1147 by King Conrad III, who used the term Austria for the first time.
By the way: The German name of Austria is Österreich, still including the etymological connection with the "eastern realm".

It is not only English speaking people who run the risk of confusing Austria with Australia. Here is a list of "vulnerable" languages:

Albanian: Austri - Australi
Bulgarian: Awstrija - Awstralija
Croatian: Austrija - Australija
English: Austria - Australia
Estonian: Austria - Austraalia
Hungarian: Ausztria - Ausztrália
Indonesian: Austria - Australia
Italian: Austria - Australia
Japanese: ōsutoria - ôsutoraria
Latvian: Austrija - Australija
Lithuanian: Austrija - Australija
Malay: Austria - Australia
Polish: Austria - Australia
Portuguese: Áustria - Austrália
Rhaeto-Romanic: Austria - Australia
Romanian: Austria - Australia
Russian: Awstrija - Awstralija
Serbian: Austrija - Australija
Slovenian: Avstrija - Avstralija
Spanish: Austria - Australia
Turkish: Avusturya - Avustralya
Ukrainian: Awstrija - Awstralija
Welsh: Awstria - Awstralia

On the other hand there is no "danger" for Arabs, Scandinavians, Slovaks or Czechs, as you can see in the following list:

Afrikaans: Oostenryk - Australië
Arabic: Nimsā - Ustrāliyā
Armenian: Awstria - Australia
Czech: Rakousko - Austrálie
Chinese: Àodìlì - Àodàlìyà
Danish: Østrig - Australien
Dutch: Oostenrijk - Australië
German: Österreich - Australien
Faroese: Eysturríki - Avstralia
Finnish: Itävalta - Australia
French: Autriche - Australie
Greek: Afst'ria - Avstralía
Icelandic: Austurríki - Ástralía
Irish: An Ostair - An Astráil
Maltese: Awstrija - Awstralja
Norwegian: Österrike - Australien
Slovak: Rakúsko - Austrália
Somali: Osteeriya - Awstraaliya
Swedish: Österrike - Australien
Vietnamese: Áo - Úc

(see also www.geonames.org/AU/other-names-for-australia.html and www.geonames.org/AT/other-names-for-austria.html)

Austria’s first Cultural Village of Europe

Kirchheim im Innkreis (Upper Austria) will be Austria’s first Cultural Village of Europe.

In 2003 Graz (Styria) was the first city (of Austria) designated as the European Capital of Culture; Linz (Upper Austria) will be the European Capital of Culture in 2009 (together with Vilnius, Lithuania). Further cities (or at least countries) have been selected until 2019 – there will be no other Austrian city among them.

In 1999 eleven rural communities across Europe signed a "Charter of the villages" and since then proclaim a European VILLAGE of Culture in addition to the European CITY of Culture.

The municipality of Kirchheim im Innkreis was the first Austrian village which joined the Foundation of Cultural Villages of Europe (2000) (As of today there is one other Austrian village member of the foundation: the neighbouring Aurolzmünster, 12 km north-easterly of Kirchheim).

2010 Kirchheim will be the official Cultural Village of Europe.

Kirchheim im Innkreis is located 15 driving minutes to the west of Ried im Innkreis, Upper Austria.
It includes 233 buildings, distributed among the populated places of Ampfenham, Buch, Edt, Federnberg, Grub, Kirchheim, Kraxenberg, Ramerding, Rödham and Schacher.
Population: 701 (as of 2006).

Kirchheim is smaller than (Bad) Kleinkirchheim (the German klein means small or little in English, so one could think of “Little Kirchheim” being smaller than Kirchheim…) and smaller than Grosskirchheim (the German gross means big in English); there are another 12 Kirchheims within the GeoNames.org database (11 in Germany and 1 in France).

The shortest path through Austria

Austria is divided into nine states, each of which has its own provincial capital. If you want to travel from one capital to another and visit all nine of them, the shortest path would be the following 1,200 km-route:

Eisenstadt – Wien – St. Pölten – Linz – Graz – Klagenfurt – Salzburg – Innsbruck – Bregenz.

According to GoogleMaps your travel time would be 13 hours.

On your route you have to leave Austria for 94.5 km and travel through the Federal Republic of Germany. But never mind: There is no border control between Austria and Germany since both countries are part of the Schengen area.

Was Mozart really Austrian?

There was an interesting article in yesterday’s newspaper about Austria’s immigrant population. (Here is a link, but unfortunately in German only). It is said that 16% of Austrians were born somewhere outside today’s boundaries of the Austrian Republic.

Quite a number of historic famous Austrians suffer the same fate. Especially if you think of the Austro-Hungarian Empire, which used to be the second largest country of Europe and included Austria, Hungary, the Czech Republic, Slovakia, Slovenia, Croatia, Bosnia and Herzegovina, and parts of today’s Romania, Montenegro, Poland, Ukraine, Italy, and the Republic of Serbia.

Having this in mind, it is not so easy to answer the question: Who is Austrian?

Of course there is a legal definition of citizenship, and one might forge close emotional links with a specific country for any other reasons. A possible definition of "Austrianship" might also be: You are Austrian, if Austria is the place of your birth. (Our word nation comes from the Latin word for birth).

From a historical point of view, this definition needs not only a spatial but also a temporal investigation. Is it possible to be a "famous Austrian", if the place of your birth used to be part of Austria at that time but is now part of Hungary, Poland, etc.? And what’s about those who were born at places which belong to Austria now, but were parts of other countries then?

Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart was born 1756 in Salzburg. At that time, Salzburg was an independent Archbishopric (= an ecclesiastical state) of the Holy Roman Empire and definitely not a part of Austria. His "colleague" Ludwig van Beethoven was born in Bonn, Germany, but got the Austrian citizenship and saw himself as a citizen of Vienna. Johann Strauss II (composer of "The Blue Danube" and other famous waltzes) was born in Vienna, Austria, but later became a citizen of Saxe-Coburg and Gotha.

Other Examples:

The Austrian-Hungarian-actor Peter Lorre ("Arsenic and Old Lace" and "Casablanca") was born in Ružomberok, which is now part of Slovakia. Screenwriter, film director, and producer Billy Wilder ("Some Like It Hot") was born 1906 in Sucha Beskidzka, Austria-Hungary then, today part of Poland. (Wilder himself lived in Vienna from 1916 to 1926).

The founder of the psychoanalytic school of psychology, Sigmund Freud: Born 1856 in Príbor, Austria-Hungary, today Czech Republic. The mathematician and philosopher Kurt Gödel: 1906 born in Brno, Austria-Hungary (now Czech Republic). So are they Austrians or Czechs?

And of course there is one person we normally want to exclude from our Austrian consciousness: Adolf Hitler was born 1889 in Braunau am Inn, which has been part of Austria since 1816 – and still is. At least Hitler changed his citizenship in 1932 and became German…

Welcome to Elysium Austria

Elysium is the Latin word for the ancient Greek Elysion, the resting place of the heroic and the virtuous.

I will blog here about Austria, the 117th smallest country of the world, home country of Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, Gov. Schwarzenegger, The Sound of Music, Red Bull, and others.
There will be a little bit about geography, history, statistics, unbelieveable stuff, and useless knowledge.

Most of the time, I will use statistics, tables, lists, and maps to answer all the questions I never dared to ask my geography teachers.

Welcome to Elysium Austria!