Note from Steve: I'm not trying to offend anyone with this, and if anyone is offeneded, please just take my sincere apology now and don't send hate mail. This is seriously a town in Austria. (48' 03"N 13' 51"E). I was laughing my ass off. The second sign (below) carries the hilarity even further: "Bitte — nicht so schnell!" is German for "Please — not so fast!" (Evidently this type of sign is a commonplace reminder in those parts for drivers to keep their speed down to protect children, but the unintended double meaning in this case is particularly amusing.)
netscape.com
When you think of Austria, no doubt you think of such cities and towns as Vienna, Innsbruck and Salzburg. But there is another one. And because of its name, tourists steal the signs. The name? It's Fucking.
Agence France Presse and Britain's Sunday Telegraph report that the residents of Fucking(pronounced Fooking) are quite perturbed with British tourists who think the name of the town is so hilarious they want to take a piece of it home with them. So they swipe the signs. There are only 32 homes in this charming Austrian village with breathtaking views of lakes and forests and none of its residents understand why their signs are so popular. In fact, sign stealing is the only crime in Fucking.
The good people of Fucking have wised up. They have embedded their signs in concrete. Try stealing one now! We quote. Directly. Exactly. This is what police chief Kommandant Schmidtberger told the Sunday Telegraph: "We will not stand for the Fucking signs being removed. It may be very amusing for you British, but Fucking is simply Fucking to us. What is this big Fucking joke? It is puerile."
Interestingly, it is only the British who seem to have such a fascination with the name of this little town. A local guide told the Telegraph that the Germans want to see the Mozart house in Salzburg, while the Americans only care about the area around which "The Sound of Music" was filmed. The Japanese just want to see Hitler's birthplace in Braunau. The British are different. A woman who runs a guest house told the paper, "Just this morning I had to tell an English lady who stopped by that there were no Fucking postcards."These Austrians may be on to something about the Brits. The BBC News reports that a Northamptonshire secondary school in Great Britain has had such a problem with its students swearing that they have instituted a five-word limit in each class. When a student swears, the teacher writes a mark on the board. After five marks, no one is allowed to swear for the duration of the class. If the rule is broken? They get a severe talking-to by the teacher. We're thinking there won't be any field trips to Fucking, Austria.
nicht so schnell, indeed.
ReplyDeleteour term for $%^&*() has its origins in the german language: 'ficking' or some such thing, but what is this word? as a proper noun, it doesn't require an origin or an etymology....
maybe they're just scaring tourists away from the last bucolic town remaining in their scenic, tourism-ridden country...
oh, and by the way: Austrians and Germans drive WAY TOO FAST. So I'm thinking 'nicht so schnell' isn't necessarily directed at tourists........
'Nicht so schnell' is definately directed at the locals. I know because of the Autobahn that Germans are really fast drivers, but I never thought about the Austrians.
ReplyDeleteIt does sound like Fucking is lovely (we all know it is LOL) and it's probably a scare tactic to keep those nasty tourists out, just like you said. Still, with a name like Fucking...
A town near me has a sign for 'Butt Hollow Road' that was extremely popular for theft until they set it into the ground with concrete.
When I read the quote from the cop, flashbacks of "The Osbornes" popped in my head. You'd halfway expect him to yell "SHARON!" afterwards.