h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

...and it was close to mountains...

I'm eating white with roasted hazelnuts, not milka though... But I prefer the REALLY dark stuff with about 75% cocoa... I think we've ruled out most of Austria if there's _mountains_

Found it!

http://www.capernwray.org.uk/euroschools/tauernhof-index.html

Schladming...

...small towns, mountains, not to forget cows! I had a friend who lived in what we called a "Cowvillage", which means that there lived more cows than people. When we were about 14 we even discovered the end of the world there, yes, I can say: From where I live the end of the world is only a few km away.

Still: I like Austria.

Do you speak... Austrian? What is the official language? German? Please forgive me for being ignorant on this one...

Yes, German, but of course not _proper_ German Can't have just anybody going around speaking _proper_ German...

The official language is German, yes, but most Germans whould certainly say that what we speak doesn't deserve the name. We have a few different words and when Austrians are speaking on German TV in a bit of dialect they usually get subtitles...

What do you say, Malabarista?

See what I mean? My post was just a bit too late...

Of course not! lol! My relatives also speak a dialect of German/Dutch... "Low German" they call it... Apperently it's not actually a written language. My people are not exactly academic... They're more the farmer type... Although I do have one cousin in med school! :P

Can you send me some Milka? I googled it and can't find any indication of it being avaliable here. How much do you think that would cost me?

But I suppose we'll both agree the Swiss are worse... It's like the Belgians: they talk funny but make good chocolate...

"Plattdeutsch" (Low German) is also the dialect spoken in the area my mother comes from and moved to again now... I can understand it, but if I try to speak it, Dutch comes out, they're too close...

Plattdeutsch? isn't that in the border area with the Netherlands? I am from Groningen, the Netherlands and i thought that my dialect and Platt didn't difer that much...


But, ofcourse, i could be completely mistaken!

I don't know how much it whould cost to send Milka to Canada.

Yes, swiss-german is worse, but it's even hard to understand what they write sometimes, and I think that probblem doesn't really exist between Germans and Austrians, unless they write in dialect.
But sometimes I think that Germans really try hard not to understand what we say...

Well, do speak properly then, Tavaron!

there are many varieties of Platt, it is spoken all the way from the Dutch border to the North of Germany... If you speak Dutch you'll have no problem, as I said, I don't speak it but do understand it...

I do my best, oida! See, I'm trying hard oida, oida I do!

(oida: austrian word that can mean nearly everything, in this case showing that I directly address Malabarista and to give more weight to what I say; a literal translation whould be: old)

Do you know why Belgians (and Austrians, of course) have square drinking glasses?

It's so they won't leave rings on the table...

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.
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no, that's a very bad joke...

Yeah, do you need me to explain it to you?

Haaaahaaa.
...you are lucky that I just can't think of any joke at all...

Yeah...
Do you know how many austrians it takes to paint an upstairs windowsill?
two -one to paint, one to hold the ladder
And a downstairs windowsill?
12 -one to paint, one to hold the lader and 10 to dig the hole for the ladder (and move the cows...) Can't help it!