Money
 You’ll need a lot of this, particularly when you change money.
Austria is known for taking the highest commissions in Europe.
These commissions are then channeled back into maintaining the value
of the Austrian currency, so that you, as a foreigner, pay higher exchange
rates and provide the exchange bureaus with higher surcharges.
It’s a vicious circle, and the only way to get out of it is turn
Austria into a colony of a more powerful nation or shoot the guys at the
exchange bureaus. Both options
have been tried.
The unit of currency in Austria is the Austrian Schilling.
It used to be a currency people could sink their teeth into but has since become
inedible with the standardization of European currency manufacturing
techniques. It is a long known fact of advertising that showing a successful
person eating/doing/shooting/screwing something makes that product or action
that much more desirable by the mindless masses.
This is virutally the same principle as Brown’s Currency Cousin Rule,
which states that currencies with the same or similar names coast or sink
with other currencies of that name -- hence, the proliferation of currencies
called the dollar in the twentieth century, as every Tom, Dick, and hairless
nation sought to become a world power.
This also explains why no other country in the world has chosen to
name its currency the rouble, the zaïre, or the lek.
The Austrian schilling underwent
a worldwide jibe in the early 1990's, as its cousin, the Kenyan shilling,
went through heavy manipulation by the corrupt African governmental powers
that be. Ignoramuses assumed
Austria and Kenya were neighbors, and the Austrian schilling took a nosedive
as investors pulled their money out of Vienna under the assumption it was
being routed by rowdy African tribes.
Prior to this, the Austrians had been rather attached to their
schilling, but with the Tanzanian and Ugandan shillings now taking a higher
profile in international circles, the Austrian government realized just how
precarious it may be holding onto a currency Africans will defile as readily
as they’d circumcise a female.
Debates have been held in the Bundesrat whether to rename the currency the
dollar, but an Austrian dollar sounds dangerously similar to the Australian
dollar,
whose value, as everyone knows, is regulated by drunken former rugby
players.
Accommodation
This is a big problem. In terms
of prices, Austria thinks its Switzerland, yet delivers services on par with
Hungary. This creates the
disorientating feeling of never knowing where you are until the check comes,
after which you know you’re broke.
The sickening part about accommodation in Austria is that it’s always full.
It doesn’t matter if you stop in a town in the middle of nowhere,
you’ll be told there are no vacancies.
This practice goes back a hundred years when the British hotel chain
NO VACANCIES moved into Austria with a vengeance (they actually thought they
were setting up shop in Australia, but the boat operators got the countries
switched by mistake). These
discount hotels were meant to be the natural option when guests were told
there were no vacancies elsewhere.
It became such common practice for bigger hotels to refer guests to
the NO VACANCIES chains that even to this day, they’ll still say “No
vacancies” as if they’re greeting you hello.
NO VACANCIES folded in 1945 after a six year period of too many vacancies,
but the referrals continue. And
because people actually start to believe what they keep telling themselves
for so long -- the entire Hollywood film industry is built on such fragile
psychotherapy -- the fellow behind the counter really believes his hotel has
no vacancies. Actually, if he
did a little research, he’d find there are always rooms available in every
Austrian town at out-of-this-world sort of prices.
How do you as a tourist handle the “no vacancy” argument?
Ignore the receptionist.
Answer him or her as if s/he said exactly what you hoped.
An example:
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YOU: Do you have any rooms available here?
RECEPTIONIST: No vacancies, sir.
YOU: Splendid. Fourth floor,
please.
RECEPTIONIST: Not a room available in the entire town.
YOU: With a balcony. Yes,
preferably with a balcony.
RECEPTIONIST: We’d love to
accommodate you, but all of Austria is booked up, sir.
YOU: What time did you say checkout was?
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You’re in a Germanic country, and the Austrians have no more of a sense of
humor than the Nazis they’ve inbred with across the border.
In the annual comedy competitions between the two nations, no team
has ever been funny enough for the competition to begin.
So remember. Joking your
way out of any situation will only get you in deeper.
The Austrians will overlook your attempts at humor and take
everything you say literally. If
you ask an Austrian “Why did the chicken cross the road?”, the Austrian will
first ask you the width of the road, the type of chicken, the chicken’s age,
his mental state, and what other options the chicken had besides crossing
the road. By that time, you
don’t want to tell the joke. Use
this psychology on the Austrian in reverse when searching for a room.
Ask all the questions you have about this supposedly unavailable
room, from the general to the really specific, down to the type of
floorboards used in the bathroom construction.
The receptionist will either let you have the room eventually or else
furnish you with the structural plans for the building.
Vienna
Österichia, Eggstraße 100/3B,C.
The German term for Austria is Österreich, which means Eastern Reich.
This hostel, run by a family of highly educated ostriches -- they
were educated at the finest Oxford zoos -- combines a pun of the country’s
name with the family’s humble origins.
Prices are reasonable, but the only food you’ll get served here is
made with ostrich eggs.
This place is definitely not appropriate for those with high
cholesterol levels!
Salzburg
W.A.M.
, Nuttsogasse 35. Everyone
knows Salzburg is the home of Mozart.
W.A.M., Salzburg’s newest hotel, honors the musical whiz kid with his
initials, which also conveniently stand for “We accept Mastercard.”
W.A.M. founder, Foxindie Blowhart, says that W.A.M. exists “to bring
together for guests the complete Mozart experience.”
Guest awaken and fall asleep to Wolfgang’s tunes
They sleep in the same-sized cramped and stuffy beds subject to the same
odors and viruses Wolfy experienced.
Many an aspiring composer the world over has checked into W.A.M. with the
hopes that a Mozartlike experience will turn them into a future Mozart.
The closest anyone has gotten is contracting typhoid fever from drinking
the same glass of milk Mozart had left unfinished since 1791.
Food
 Austrian food is not a big step up from the food served by its Nazi cousin.
The two countries share bad recipes which neither knows how to cook, and
the food still comes out bad.
The Austrians take their biggest meal at midday, shortly after they awaken.
Supper is not a glamorous affair and it’s quite popular to take this meal
at impoverished soup kitchens.
The Austrians disguise bad tasting soup with even worst tasting dumplings,
called knödel. Wienerschnitzel --
pork or veal cutlet coated in breadcrumbs -- was a ‘delicacy’
invented by those people too stingy to regularly buy fresh bread.
Austria’s most famous dish is the strudel.
But after the Second World War, Germany took credit for this, too.
If Austria and Germany don’t come to some kind of agreement soon, Austria
looks likely to be sanctioned out of strudel permanently by 2020.
The Austrians are big tipplers of beer, their favorite being wheat beer.
In the health conscious age we live in, the Austrians now brew whole
wheat and seven grain beers.
Austrian vegetarians consume copious quantities of these beers with either beans
or legumes to form a complete protein in their diets, making them the healthiest
alcoholics anywhere on Earth. Beer
is served by either the liter or the tank.
A tank varies in size by region in Austria but is generally about the
same size as the gas tank of a Volkswagen Bug.
This was the tank of choice to drink out of during the 1970's when
gasoline/ethanol fuel mixtures were cheaper by volume than a beer in the pub.
However, the mixture did cause a lead fixation in many people, which
encouraged the oil companies to release a more health conscious unleaded
variety.
We
mean this literally. The
schilling was composed of the same syrupy residues that go into
manufacturing artificially flavored maple syrup.
In
fact, Australia and Austria have long been confused as nations.
The British originally intended to export their convicts to
Austria, which needed a higher number of convicts at the time to keep
the intellectual/scum ratio balanced.
A slip of the tongue got the convicts sent to Australia instead.
In 1938, Hitler would have much rather preferred to invade
Australia, as the weather is better there, but in a drunken moment, he
accidentally said Austria.
By the time he realized his troops were in the wrong country, Austria
had surrendered.
It’s
been scientifically verified that you can’t tell a joke in German.
Delicacy
is a wonderful word.
Restaurateurs in France first originated the word to quickly get rid of
unpopular items on the menu.
They found that if they called something a delicacy, people would not
only pay top dollar for it, they would brag to their friends that they
ate it. Without delicacies,
frog’s legs and gizzards would never have made it into the human
digestive tract.
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