Let's learn about Austria!

Danke, Geography Now! Host Paul Barbaros



Classroom link:  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hKsGmyhsKFA

Wiederholung aus Österreich: Was kann ich auf Deutsch?!

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25 Years Since the Fall of the Berlin Wall

Border patrol guards had lost permission to shoot at will at border crossings in the spring of 1989.  This inspired East-Germans to abandon their apartments and risk everything to live elsewhere.  For better or worse, these people felt a need to leave the guided life available to them under Russian influence, and instead, wanted to be in charge of their own futures. 

25 years later, there are plenty of people who miss the security they had under communism.  The term for this is "Nostalgie,"  or nostalgia for the East (Ost).

Differences between the two styles of government are becoming even more clear now, with

• the border disputes between Russia and the Ukraine;
• attacks by radical islamic organizations against capitalist democracies;
• Edward Snowden finding shelter in Russia after his revelations;

25 years ago the threat of losing everything were clear.

Here is a 2 minute news clip, which follows the emotions on both sides of this historical event from the perspective of the Soebel family.  They were on a camping trip in Hungary 25 years ago, read about the offer to pass through a gap in the wall that afternoon on a flier posted to a tree in their campground, and took up the offer!  Guards did not fire upon the picnickers in Hungary, who on the afternoon of August 19, 1989, slipped through a momentarily-opened border with Austria.  Rather than just freeing a handful of citizens, hundreds slipped through that brief gap, setting the tone for what was soon to follow.

http://www.zdf.de/ZDFmediathek/beitrag/video/2220970/25-Jahre-Paneuropaeisc
hes-Picknick#/beitrag/video/2220970/25-Jahre-Paneuropaeisches-Picknick

BERLIN IN PHOTOS TODAY 

20 second video:  Berlin today:


Pilpop filmt Berlin (in Miniatur?)  "Little Big Berlin"


"I dedicate this film to Berlin where I have been living for 19 years now. While the architecture of Berlin is stunningly beautiful, only its inhabitants make Berlin the unique city that it is. In every corner there is something new to discover. And the best thing to do is to film it.
Filmed with my beloved Sony HC9. Edited with Sony Vegas Pro 9.The miniature effect is called tilt-shift, which originates from a particular lens that was used to photograph architecture. The miniature effect is a by-product of that. It can also be achieved by digital postprocessing.
Music: "Hungarian Rhapsody No. 2" by Franz Lisz "
-- Does life in Berlin seem that much different than our own?  Different in which ways?


All sorts of press infos regarding the Fall of the Berlin Wall can be found here: 
HIER GIBT ES ALLERLEI PRESSEMATERIAL ZUM MAUERFALL

Österreich gewinnt? Ja, es stimmt!

Conchita Wurst:  H

Austrian drag queen Conchita Wurst, popularly known as "the bearded lady," won the Eurovision Song Contest on Saturday with the James Bond-theme-like ballad Rise Like a Phoenix, before a global TV audience of about 180 million people in 45 countries.

'It is just a lady with a beard. But it is like we have landed on the moon.'- René Berto, Conchita Wurst's agent

Wurst, sporting high heels, butterfly eyelashes and a full beard, topped the Netherlands' modern-country duo the Common Linnets, who sang Calm After The Storm. Sweden's Sanna Nielsen came in third with her new-age pop song Undo.
"For me, my dream came true," Wurst, 25, whose birth name is Tom Neuwirth, told a news conference after the win. "But for our society, it just showed me that there are people out there who want to go into the future and go on, you know, not stepping back or thinking in the past."

• Eurovision 2014 sees geopolitical tensions creep in

The Danish organizers had declared tolerance a main theme for this year's event, and the rainbow-coloured flag symbolizing gay pride has been flying in many places in Copenhagen during the past week.
"I hope we can change just a few minds," said Wurst's agent René Berto. "It is just a lady with a beard. But it is like we have landed on the moon."
Wurst, Austria's first Eurovision winner since 1966, received the biggest cheers from the audience but also stirred controversy in some countries.
Online petitions were started in Belarus, Armenia and Russia — whose government passed a law last year banning "gay propaganda" among minors — to have Wurst removed or edited out of broadcasts in their countries.
"We did it. It is the most amazing thing. But I knew she would win. I just knew it," Austrian fan Damel Saric told Reuters. "I have travelled to Copenhagen just for this moment."

Geopolitical tensions creep in

The Eurovision competition, which has been held annually since 1956, was created to help foster unity after World War Two and is meant to be non-political. But political strife slipped between the cracks at this year's contest.
Many in the audience booed when the Russian contestants, the 17-year-old Tolmachevy twin sisters, were presented at Saturday's opening ceremony and again when they were awarded points from other, mostly neighbouring, nations.
It was widely speculated that Russia's entry could suffer for the country's annexation of Crimea in March and the government's intransigence on gay rights. Eurovision is hugely popular in the gay community.
"The two Russian girls are sweet, and it is not their fault. But this is a party for everybody. Russia doesn't get that," said one of the booing spectators, a gay Dutch fan who identified himself as Xander.
Ukrainian singer Mariya Yaremchuk, 21, got huge cheers at her performance.
"It could be in the favour of Ukraine, that people vote for Ukraine and people don't vote for Russia because they don't like the political situation," said another Dutch fan, Patrick Van Der Ploeg.
Adding to controversy, organizers said votes from Crimea count as Ukrainian votes, because tallies are based on existing national telephone codes.
Ukraine's song was voted the sixth best of the 26 songs, and Russia's came in at seventh.
Since politics had played a role in the voting in the past, half the points are now awarded by professional judges and half by the public via phone and SMS.

 ----
So kennen die Deutschen ,,Tante Wurst" aus der Fernsehserie "WILD GIRLS"


Hier aus 2007,  singt er als "Tom" (Neuwirth):  

VW Autos aus Schnee

Und wer hat gewonnen?

Euro crisis turns German-speaking Italians against Rome

3 October 2012 Last updated at 08:13 ET

By Bethany Bell BBC News, South Tyrol (Alto Adige)

 

Largely German-speaking South Tyrol has been part of Italy since the end of World War I

In the vineyards of South Tyrol's Alpine valleys, the grape harvest is under way.

Alois Lageder's family have made wine here for five generations, but when some of the vines were planted, this region was part of Austria. And most people here speak German, even though it has been part of Italy since the end of World War I.

Mr Lageder says the mix of cultures is an asset.  "We are Austrians, we were Austrians 100 years ago and so we have the Austrian culture, but also the Austrian or German mentality and approach to work," he said.

 

Local wine maker Alois Lageder believes South Tyrol's people are Austrians at heart

"But I think we are lucky because living here in the middle between north and south, we are not too strong or too straight. I think this is our big advantage, that we understand the Italian mentality but we understand the mentality of our big markets like Austria and Germany and Switzerland."
South Tyrol is Italy's richest province, a largely German-speaking part of the country that has autonomous status. Its Italian name is Alto Adige.

But now the euro crisis means the Italian government wants to cash in. It is asking the regional government here to pay more, fuelling resentment of Rome and raising the spectre of separatism.

Tensions German speakers are the local majority in South Tyrol - but native Italian speakers live here too. Relations between the two groups have not always been easy.

The journalist and author Lucio Giudiceandrea says before the region was granted autonomy in the 1970s, tensions sometimes ran to violence. "Germans and Italians lived for many years in conflict with each other because South Tyrol was annexed to Italy at the end of World War I against the will of the local German-speaking population. The Italians were sent here as colonisers and there is a longstanding hostility between the groups," he said. "The autonomy system [set up in the 1970s] gave us the chance to live side by side, but with no great contacts."

Over the years, tensions have eased. Being bilingual is now an accepted fact of life; members of Italy's national police, the Carabinieri, are regularly sent to brush up their German at the Alpha Beta Piccadilly language school in Bolzano.

But these days, Italy's financial problems are reawakening old resentments.

Tax gripes Walking through the affluent streets of Bolzano, with its quaint Tyrolean architecture, it is easy to come away with the impression that South Tyrol is remarkably untouched by the euro crisis.
Unemployment is low and business is thriving. But, as in other wealthy parts of Europe, many German speakers here resent having to bail out southern Italians - whom they see as spendthrift and profligate.

Elmar Thaler, Federation, Historic South Tyrolean Riflemen: 'People are asking why we should have to pay for Italy. We are not actually Italians anyway. '  Up to now, 90% of taxes paid here stayed here. 

But the government in Rome needs cash, and wants more money from South Tyrol. Siegfried Brugger, an MP from the governing South Tyrolean Peoples' party, says that goes against their autonomy agreement. But he says they are willing to negotiate. "We have a lot of problems because we have to give a lot of money to Rome," he said. "But we want to decide ourselves how and where to save and for us it is very important to collaborate with Italy and not to give money without a guarantee."

And some people want to leave Italy altogether. The 500-year-old group, the Südtiroler Schützenbund (the Federation of Historic South Tyrolean Riflemen), has long campaigned for reunification with North Tyrol, which is part of Austria.

Separatism calls In April, the group organised a protest in Bolzano demanding freedom from Rome. It was attended by around 5,000 men and women in lederhosen and traditional dress. The Schützen's leader, Elmar Thaler, says the worse things get economically, the better it is for their cause.

 

Elmar Thaler says South Tyrol should separate completely from Rome. 

 

"People are asking why should we have to pay for Italy?" he asked. "We aren't actually Italian anyway. In this way, the crisis has made many people aware that they haven't got anything to do with Italy."

This is a minority view. Separatism is not the hot political issue that it is in the Spanish province of Catalonia, and the Schuetzen say they are not linked to other Italian separatist movements, like the Northern League.But Siegfried Brugger says many politicians in South Tyrol are watching developments in places like the Basque Country and Scotland very closely.

Lucio Giudiceandrea says the region is at a turning point. "The situation in Italy and all over Europe is no longer certain and the money is no longer freely available," he said.  "I think we have to learn to live with the other group and to see each other not as rivals but as friends. If we don't, for sure we will fall into conflicts. And of course this situation depends only on us."

On a sunny day in Bolzano, the cafes do a roaring trade in cappuccino, as a street musician in a Tyrolean hat with a feather plays that most Austrian of tunes, the Blue Danube. The financial crisis is testing Europe's historic fault-lines.

Tirols Pitztaler Konditorei -- auf einem Gletscher

Wieviele Gäste können hier Kaffee trinken?

Mozart und Salz: Salzburg und Hallstadt

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