The Austrian culture

In our school we just welcomed an exchange stundent from England and my task is to tell her something about the Austrian culture, stereotypes and clichés. So I wanted to share some of my ideas with you.

First of all some basic information.

One of the most important things in Austria is the formal vs. informal pronoun (“du” and “Sie”). You have to use formal pronoun when you’re talking to people older than you. So when you are in school you have to call the teachers “Sie” and the students “du”.

Another very important thing is the title and the last name. When a person has a title you have to call him by their title and last name. This is very important to the Austrians.

Shaking hands is the established form of greeting. Take your other hand out of your pocket and look into the person’s eyes. This is a very polite way of greeting in Austria and you should really stick to it.

Clichés and stereotypes

As you probably know, there are a lot of clichés and stereotypes all about Austria, like for example that we always wear our traditional clothes such as "Dirndl" and "Lederhosen" which is absolutaly not true. Of course we wear these clothes but not all the time just on festivals or other special occasions.

It is a clichés that Austrians love to ski and generally they love all kinds of winter sports. And that is of course true. It is the only type of sport we are good at, so we are also very proud of that fact.

I hope you liked my posting and that you learned something about the Austrian culture.

If you would like to add some interesting facts about Austria, feel free to write them into the comment section bellow.