Every once in a while you’ll see a headline about someone who went to the wrong city. The guy who planned to go to San José (the Costa Rican city) and mistakenly booked a flight for San Jose, California (it only cost him a £1,000 change fee). People who wind up going to Portland, ME instead of the one in Oregon. Or Ontario CA instead of Ontario, Canada.
But recently a TikTokker named NomaTheExplorer posted the following on her TikTok account:
If you think you’re having a bad day, just remember there’s a counter at an Austrian airport for people who booked a flight to Austria thinking they were going to Australia.
Imagine looking for kangaroos and you start seeing signs in German. 😭
Here’s the original TikTok video:
@nomatheexplorer A whole wrong continent???😭😭
It’s gone viral and has an insane number of views. 4 million, I think?
This just perplexed the crap out of me. I mean, I used to get Australia and Austria mixed up when I was a little kid…but, I mean, I was a little kid! I used to think that Hungary was pronounced and spelled “Hungry,” too…because I was a little kid and didn’t know any better. And I hate to tell you how I innocently pronounced “Nigeria” until I was about 7 or 8. But there were enough full grown adults who arrived in Austria who thought they were going to arrive in Australia and that there was an entire help desk for them???
I had to investigate this.
It turns out that back in 2021, there was a photo on 9GAG (9GAG is an online platform and social media website based in Hong Kong, which allows its users to upload and share user-generated content or other content from external social media websites) that got a whole lot of upvotes:
Sorry, this is Austria not Australia!
Need help? Please press the button.
Commend provides Security and Communication. From Salzburg to the rest of the world. Even for the most unlikely of situations.
www.commend.com
The pic was of an advertisement at a baggage carousel (note: not a counter) at Salzburg Airport.
Commend Inc. has been developing and manufacturing Security and Integrated Communication systems for the protection of people, buildings and assets for the past 50 years. The ad was clever, and helped advertise security and communications…even if you wound up in a different country, LOL!
But a counter to help these people? No. Some people have said that as many as 100 travelers per year have arrived in Austria even though they thought they would wind up in Australia. That in itself is unconfirmed, but even if it were true…and even if they were all at the same airport, that’s still only an average of 1 person every 3 days. Not really a pressing need for a counter.
The Salzburg Airport confirmed as much:
“There is no such counter at Salzburg Airport, never has been, as a matter of fact. I have never heard of anyone travelling to Salzburg by mistake, when they actually wanted to go to Australia,” Susanne Buchebner, deputy head of public relations for the Salzburg airport, said in an email to the Washington Post.
It did make for some interesting comments on ye olde internets though… (I don’t know the origins of any of these photos. I’ll be happy to give credit, or remove, upon request).
This one made me smile:
As did this:
But this one made me chortle. Accompanying comment: They have the same ad in Australia!”:
Along the same vein:
I mean, they’re so different!
This isn’t to say that NO ONE ever makes the Austria-Australia mistake. Because I distinctly remember seeing this shirt at a tourist shop in Salzburg during our first visit, in 2016:
In fact, I almost bought it, because I thought it was SO ABSURD for people to think that Australia was Austria, or vice versa.
Silly me.
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2 comments
I was once on a flight to Auckland, and the guy next to me was supposed to be going to Oakland. After about 2 hrs and wondering why the flight was taking so long, he asked a flight attendant. This was back in the early 90’s. The look on their faces was comical.
My biggest Fear