Austria Europe

A small, beautiful country, about 8 million inhabitants, about 80.000 square kilometers, beautiful mountain ranges and lake districts, summer and winter tourism. Part of the EuropeanUnion. The capital is Vienna. Graz, Innsbruck, Salzburg and Linz are the larger towns that also have their own universities. The language is German. Practically all children learn English as a second language, typically combined with a few years of French, Italian or Spanish. Austria is considered a catholic country (75% catholics vs 5% protestants). But these numbers are just on paper because religion is taken much less seriously than, e.g., in Italy or the USA and only 10-15% go to church regularly.

Austria came into being after World War I, when the large Austrian-Hungarian Monarchy was split up and stripped of all power in 1918. For a long time, everyone inside and outside of Austria thought that this country was dead-born without significant industry or resources, without a future. Austrians looked toward Germany to join, which happened actually in 1938. Only after WWII, Austrians slowly developed a new feeling of identity and - with the rise of tourism - found a sound economic basis. Austria is the country with the highest per-head-income from tourism in the world. Today, Austria has also modern industries, but not quite on the same level as in neighbouring Germany or Switzerland.

The political system was dualistic for decades. A strong christian-conservative party ("blacks") and a social-democratic party ("reds") compromised and neutralized each other into final stagnation. The positive side of it was a "social partnership" that institutionalized negotiations between industries and unions and practically eliminated strikes. Public schools are of good quality and free, health service and pensions available to all. The negative side of it: necessary reforms did not happen. This gave chances to smaller parties: the "greens" (environmental) and the "blue" (right-wing-nationalists and liberals). Currently (2004) Austria has a black-blue government which ended a period of 30+ years of red(-black) dominance.

Culture (especially music) plays an important role in Austria - money isn't everything. A composer, author or actor may enjoy social status and affection that money can't buy. There are many well-known Austrians: Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart and Josef Haydn (music), Sigmund Freud (psychology), Ludwig Wittgenstein and Karl Popper (philosophy), Erwin Schroedinger (physics), Franz Kafka (literature), Egon Schiele (painter), Herbert von Karajan (conductor), Arnold Schwarzenegger (you know), Hermann Maier and Thomas Muster (sports), Karl Stronach (MAGNA industries) just to name a few of hundreds. BTW Elfriede Jelinek was awarded the 2004 Nobel Prize for literature. Austrian architects are pretty successful around the world.

Austrians are typically pessimistic and quiet. The rate of suicide is among the highest. At the same time, Austrians are friendly, open to foreigners and easy to communicate and live with. In a way, the "Austrian people" is an old people, at the end of the life-cycle of an empire that lasted for more than thousand years. There is a trace of the genes and an understanding of all these peoples, races and religions that once where part of the monarchy. But the days of power and dominance have gone and with them some of the proudness and ignorance that goes with that. One may safely assume that Austria will play an important role in joining Eastern Europe and the Balkan to Central Europe.

For more factual information see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Austria.

Graz, Austria. Oct 12, 2004. -- HelmutLeitner

[this is original text that classifies Austria as banana and right-wing which is very subjective and seemed to fall short. -- HelmutLeitner]

Currently under control of an industry-driven, right-wing government, in bed with the media (who are owned by German publishing houses.)

Only Italy is currently more banana.

What is this "Banana" thing? "Banana republic", a term to describe a cynic government.

Bear in mind, "right-wing" in Europe means non-Socialist. Not really, it's getting an authoritarian flavor currently. Maybe you wouldn't feel that way, because we're far from US-style media pulp, but we're moving there.

Can't speak to Austria itself, but the term "right-wing" has been so much abused of late that one tends to be skeptical of the term. Replace it with ultra-right.

Even better would be for us to recognize that a one-axis, two-direction ("right" vs. "left") nomenclature is unlikely to adequately describe the political situation in any given country.

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