No kangaroos in Austria

We were whizzing up the cable car to a massive fort on the hillside at Salzburg, enroute from Munich to Vienna, when a friendly German started chatting to us.  He first guessed that we were English (so many people confuse the accents, even though they sound nothing alike!), but when we said we were from Australia he was thrilled -- he got quite excited about our new government and started asking us all about it. 

The only problem was we know almost NOTHING about what is going on in Australia right now -- the only reason we even know that Gillard made it as our first female PM was because we saw some kind of update on a news channel on a plane between Beijing and Athens, and even then there was no sound so we couldn’t listen and just had to guess what was happening from the pictures. Of course there's the internet, but I'm staying away from anything work-related -- it's kind of nice to have no idea what’s happening in the news for a change…still, the German man didn't mind -- he was just happy to meet someone from Australia and not Austria!

Speaking of Australia vs Austria -- the Austrians are so sick of being confused with their similar-sounding counterpart that they have made special t-shirts, as well as magnets and other memorabilia that say:

Of course Bryan bought one, and the guy in the t-shirt shop seemed pretty impressed that we were Australian -- he went on to tell us that they decided to print the t-shirts because ``Americans are dumb'' (his words not mine!) and always get the two confused.  Obviously the Austrians aren't dumb -- from the looks of souvenir sales they are making a packet out of such a mix-up.