156 UniT 11 | Culture is key What kind of tour would you recommend to tourists in your area? Work together in small groups to come up with a plan of what to do and see. Consider: length of tour sights to see activities to do how they can experience typical Austrian customs When you have agreed on a plan, write a description of your tour and revise it with the help of an AI chatbot. Add some pictures and present it to the class. SPEAKING + WRITING 15 a b By the way: How the world sees the Austrians You will know that the first thing many people think of when they hear ‘Austria’ is that worldfamous musical The Sound of Music, but dig a little deeper and there is a whole range of behaviours and attitudes that make the Austrians … well, Austrian. One of the first things that visitors notice is that Austrians value punctuality. In fact, newcomers quickly realise it’s a good idea to be five minutes early for any meeting or social occasion. Being late doesn’t go down well with most people. The Austrian sense of humour is also something non-Austrians need to be aware of as it is fairly complex. Schmäh, the colloquial expression that describes a sort of good-natured yet edgy rhetoric that forms the basis of the country’s humour, can be a little hard to grasp. Apparently, this type of humour originates from servants mocking their aristocratic employers. Newcomers to Austria often mistake it as offensive, but it is usually meant to be in good fun. More objectively, there are ways to quantify Austria and how it is seen internationally in the form of surveys and reports. Year after year, Austria, and more specifically Vienna, is ranked as the best place in the world to live. Vienna has been praised in surveys for its unbeatable combination of stability, good infrastructure, strong education and healthcare services and plenty of culture and entertainment. However, in a twist on this, foreigners in Vienna have said the city offers excellent health and transport benefits but has an exceptionally unfriendly population. Despite scoring highly in terms of quality of life, many expats find it difficult to settle in and make friends in the Austrian capital. An unusually high quality of life with unusually unfriendly people – that’s the impression foreign workers have of Austria. It’s an interesting achievement to top the list in each of these categories. Talk about these questions in class: 1 Do you agree with the information presented here? How does it match/not match your own experiences? 2 What stereotypes do you know that exist between the different federal states of Austria? 3 Is it possible to talk about ‘the Austrians’, ‘the Americans’ or ‘the Viennese’, etc.? What are the dangers of such stereotyping? Nur zu Prüfzwecken – Eigentum des Verlags öbv
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