Out of curiosity:
Do you/did you ever mix up Austria and Australia?
Living in austria and never traveling outside of europe I'm kinda curious.
My mother spent some time in L.A. and she said it was mistaken frequently (she used to joke about it - "The Australia without kangaroos" was what she added when she was asked about her home country)
Since Austria and Australia are pretty much at the opposite end of the world I find it kind of funny...
This is kinda funny and made me open this thread.

I don't mean to make fun of the ones who don't know (it's not a shame not to know something and I'm pretty much uninterested in geography myself - stars and stripes, uh ... how many were there? I could google it but that'd be cheating ) but I'm kind of interested how many people do/did mistake it, how they learned about it and also (not necessarily) where they come from, because up until now, I only heard of americans mistaking it.

I'll occassionally read one as the other if I'm in a hurry, but besides that I don't really mix Austria and Australia up at all. Everyone knows where Australia is (at least they should, considering its a freaking continent), and I actually can more or less picture the location of Austria on a map after taking world history in high school (being smack dab in the middle of WW I has its advantages).

I'm Canadian.

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"It is those who know little, and not those who know much, who so positively assert that this or that problem will never be solved by science."

I don't remember ever mistaking the two - Austria = Europe & mountains; Australia = Southern hemisphere & kangaroos~

I've seen the two mixed up in manga fairly often, though.

I'm in the US.

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"[English] not only borrows words from other languages; it has on occasion chased other languages down dark alley-ways, clubbed them unconscious and rifled their pockets for new vocabulary."
-James Nicoll, can.general, March 21, 1992

i've never personally mistaken it but a friend of mines did once. i still haven't let him live it down. After all he did mistake china with japan once.

No, and that page you linked has probably a mistake in the translation because of the similarity in the way they are written in katakana.

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ççççççç[Ô .Ô] tsutopodus© will eat your manga and steal your cats!

I only do it when there's an Austrian or Australian person in close proximity.

I am well aware that Austria and Australia are written similar, Vienna is a different topic though.
Also, it seems like they are only mistaken because of their similar writing...
(Edit: Or someone is mixing those up on purpose for a laugh )

That one I will treat as an exeption

I live in Australia, and I can tell you it nothing like Austria.

Everything there tries to kill you, even the cars they make (I got hit by one). We have 9 of the top 10 most deadliest snakes, The most common snake (brown snake) is the 6th most deadliest.

Locals are very much identical to America, you have your country bogans (red necks) and highly educated city folk etc... In the big cities Its pretty mix in culture, I find it amusing that Melbourne, the city of coffee, destroyed Starbucks (even McDonald's made better coffee). We can thank all the Italians and middle eastern cafe's for that.

Bush fires are a bit of a worry where I live (Google Black Saturday, it almost hit us), turns the sun red with all the smoke.

Which reminds me, we quite often have red sunsets.

Sometimes on submit forms on the internet I select Austria as the country because they are next to each other...

PS: no I wasn't harmed apart from some bruises I did more damage to it. Zwan: 1 - Car: 0

Lol, it is quite very true. McDonalds does make better Coffee than Starbucks down in Melbourne in the city

Nope.
Only for trolling purposes.

um..no
I didn't know about Austria until few years ago..Im such a bad person =_=

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I hear you say "Why?" Always "Why?" You see things; and you say "Why?" But I dream things that never were; and I say "Why not?"

Lol, NO way. I have never mixed those two up. There's such a big effin` difference between them.

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I don't think that I've ever mixed up the two and I've certainly never heard anyone make the mistake although it's possible ... When I hear Austria I think of "Sound of Music" and beautiful landscapes and Australia is a continent literally on the other side of the world for me.

i see in different translations all the time.. most recent one i can think of is in nononono with the australian ski jump team, which became the austrian ski jump team in the next chapter.

i think the first time i saw it was in yakitate!! japan, when that guys brother shows up and he was the australian royal court chef from vienna or something like that and i was like wait what? australian royal? from vienna?

Never, except for Trolling or Sarcasm

well, i kinda like History so i know the difference.

if you like game and don't know anything outside your country, you can play game that involves them, such as Grand Strategy game (EUIII:HttT, Medieval II: TW with Stainless Steel mod, or Victoria II)
that way you may know almost every country in the World