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Thursday, November 30, 2006

fucking, austria

Fuckingaustria

people are so silly.

From the naughty toponyms archive comes the tale of a little town in Austria with a big problem keeping American tourists from stealing their street signs. Coming soon to a theater near you, it's Fucking, Austria!

The village is known to have existed as “Fucking” since at least 1070 and is named after a man from the 6th century called Focko. “Ing” is an old Germanic suffix meaning “people”; thus Fucking, in this case, means “place of Focko’s people”.

By the way:

Coincidentally there are two small municipalities just over the border in Bavaria, Germany called Petting and Kissing.

Here's the Wikipedia article, which I got to through a link to my Dildo, Newfoundland post on a Mercedesshop.com forum.

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» A town called Fucking, Austria from Boing Boing
There is a town in Austria called "Fucking." This Google map link shows that there are a number of Fucking roads there, and a quick fucking glance at the fucking satellite view shows a whole fucking lot of trees and farmland nearby. Fucking Link. (Tha... [Read More]

Comments

Dudes, I am a native of Austria and think that it is disrespectful to comment on a language without noing why they called that town Fucking. The town is called Fucking because that is a word that means raising young pigs. Austria is beautiful and wonderful in every way possible, even Fucking! The english word fucking is not even ment to be in comparisn with the german word fucking so please do some research and you will see that I am right. Next time don't judge a book by its cover.
By the way the sign is ment to tell drivers to slow down because there are schools near by so that kids can cross, it is just like the signs that say school crossing zone in America. PLEASE don't judge Austria!! Thank you!!

Whew, the bathing accessoire above seems to embody some quite humourless crab.

Being this region's aborigine (well, on the bavarian side), this isn't too surprising, in fact that joke's getting a little boring.

As much as i drew out of a local newspaper article once, Petting also has some fixed annual amount (think it was DM 6000 then) in the municipialitie's budget set aside for new signs.

BTW, "Petting 69" is also well known for being some continuous hook throughout the movie "Silentium", where the detective has to find out something about this mysterious note, which emerges to be the address of a house in... 'xactly.

Just watch an American movie, after 5 minutes somebody shouts fucking, give me a gun or I will kill you. What a society!
See what they do in Iraq every day - a final step from the games and entertainment industry. till

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  • Geography and space are always gendered, always raced, always economical and always sexual. The textures that bind them together are daily re-written through a word, a gaze, a gesture. -- Irit Rogoff

    The books one reads in childhood, and perhaps most of all the bad and good bad books, create in one's mind a sort of false map of the world, a series of fabulous countries into which one can retreat at odd moments throughout the rest of life, and which in some cases can survive a visit to the real countries which they are supposed to represent.
    -- George Orwell

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