Offense not intended but not excluded, perhaps made even worse by a blogger with relatives there.
The land of Mozart, great winter sports, pretty summer meadows up in the mountains, the land of the Vienna coffee house, the setting of the iconic film The Third Man, the birthplace of the failed painter turned politician - the guy who ultimately made the movie possible.
All of this is Austria.
But it is so much more, which is why we are calling it Little Germany.
It's just like the Little Italy, Little Saigon, or little whatever in the United States.
In other words, a place that condenses, magnifies, distorts, and ultimately reconciles. The reconciliation bit is somewhat unspecific, so you can flesh it out with anything you want. For the complete cynic, note that even the word "nothing" is a grammatical fit.
We could not help seeing some of the recent news about Austria as a more focused version of events and debates happening in the bigger European countries, too.
Specifically the amount of tax money flowing into religious run schools -- no, not madrasas -- into Christian schools. Schools that, incidentally, face the same prejudices as some madrasas. Hey, we are called religious schools but we are really not.
Sounds familiar?
Even more than this, there is an extent of xenophobia you might not expect from a country that, until less than 100 years ago, was so diverse, so multi-ethnic.
In response, Austrian politicians are scrambling to pledge adherence to a set of ethical and moral values!
Actually, they are pledging to make foreigners adhere to all the values that make a nation great.
In our series "soon coming to a German burg near you", we will monitor the laboratory of values that is Austria for you. So you don't have to go there and get the mistaken impression that the only people upholding the values are the foreigners.
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