Ok, so I'm going to tell you about Austria. It's a small country - roughly 8.5 million inhabitants - in Middle Europe.

1) First things first: Not to confuse with Australia. Yes we have electricity, refrigerators and vacuum cleaners. No, we're not living on mountains (okay, some do) and yodel to communicate. Progress didn't stop at our borders.

2) Borders! Clockwise: Czech Republic, Slovakia, Hungary, Slovenia, Italy, Switzerland, Liechtenstein, Germany.

3) Speaking of Germany: We have a complicated relationship with Germans. We consider Bavarians as one of us, but none from the other states. That's because their accent is similar to ours. We tend to think of Germans as fat, arrogant and wearing socks in sandals. Oftentimes, when we meet Germans, we somehow have to emphasize how GREAT Austria, Austrians, Austrian landscape, Austrian culture, Austrian language (we consider German with Austrian accent as a language of its own), Austrian buildings, Austrian flowers, Austrian pottery and everything is compared to (eww) Germany. In sports we're always rooting against Germany. We don't care who wins as long as it's not the Germans. In case they lose a lot of schadenfreude arises.

It's hard to say why exactly it's this way. I think it's mostly envy. Why Germany and not, for instance, Switzerland? Probably because we speak the same language and understand each other (Swiss - not so much, even though it's German on paper), they're closest culturally and 80 years ago we were buddies that went to war together. You always compare to your peers.

4) National sport, as in most of Europe's countries: Football (as in soccer-football). We love football, but we're not good at it. Seriously. Since 1964 Austria participated at one European Championship: The one we hosted together with Switzerland in 2008. Our last World Cup victory (as in we won one game)? 1990. Better than first round? 1982. Best result ever? 3rd in 1954, where only 16 teams played. Good times. We're so bad at football that we're still obsessed with one victory against Germany (our arch enemy in sports, see above): In Cordoba (Argentina) in 1978, won 3:2. And we lost against Faroe Islands once in 1990 (1:0), it was a disaster. The coach resigned the day after. We still get the chills playing against Faroe, fearing it might happen again.

2012 national team

The austro-african guy at the front left is David Alaba, our superstar. He plays for Bayern Munich!

My theory why we have a consistently mediocre team (although it gets better recently) is that we enjoy drinking too much, but discipline and work... You see, drinking is easier. That brings me to the next point.

5) Beer. We're among the heaviest drinkers in Europe. Unter EU-Top 3: Österreicher trinken 108 Liter Bier pro Jahr (108 liters per person per year, that's roughly a small beer _every day_ for _every Austrian_). My favourite is Ottakringer (from Vienna's 16th district Ottakring). Don't drink Gösser, unless it's Naturradler. Avoid Zipfer and Stiegl at all times.

6) Vienna is capital, cultural center, political center and center of every other aspect in Austria. Everything else is province, even though they don't like to hear that - don't tell anyone! The city is famous for its coffee houses (e.g. Sacher, Schwarzenberg, Hawelka, Cafe Central...) where you eat cake, drink coffee and read.

There is also a study that rates Vienna as the city with highest quality of living - worldwide Zum vierten Mal in Folge: Wien ist die Stadt mit der höchsten Lebensqualität. I don't know about its credibility though.

In Vienna there's always some vibe of "good old times", in partial because we celebrate it:

Old Trams

Schönbrunn Castle (a bit outside, but still)

The Opera

And so on. Visit Vienna, it's worth it.

7) The Vienna Philharmonic are probably the most popular orchestra of the world. Tickets for concerts in the opera house are almost always sold out and they play at least once _every day_. Every position in the orchestra is assigned twice so that they could play every day of the year in Vienna and go on tour at the same time. Every notable conductor has worked with the Vienna Philharmonic, e.g. Leonard Bernstein or Herbert von Karajan. They're that popular. Also check out where they play the Neujahrskonzert (New Year concert), the Golden Hall in the Musikverein:

2011 New Year concert

Tickets for this special concert are raffled a year before. By now you may apply for the New Year concert 2015.

8) I already mentioned that we celebrate the past, the good old times. That's because we were once an empire together with Hungary, back in 1867. It lasted until our successor to the throne was shot in 1914 and we lost WW1 in 1918. Unfortunately it didn't get better as we united with Germany only 20 years later in 1938, went to war and lost again (WW2).

Hitler in Vienna, 1938. He was Austrian too, as Germans like to point out.

There is some myth about Austria being the "victim" of Germany and that we were forced to annex. It's not true, but still popular among parts of the population. That's because we did not come to terms with the past, in contrast to Germany. Anyway, after two world wars we became the small, insignificant country we are now. We're still not quite over it, that's where our inferiority complex stems from.

Austria-Hungary

9) As in probably every country in the world, there are beautiful landscapes and places.

The alps (and other mountains).

Neusiedler See (great for sailing)

Wolfgangsee

Hallstatt

Dachstein

Innsbruck

Graz

Salzburg

Speaking of Salzburg...

10) Mozart. Nuff said.

11) Remember how I said that football is our national sport? Not entirely true. Because we suck at football, we invented skiing to punch other nations in the face.

Hermann Maier

In the 90s we were de facto unbeatable at alpine skiing. 9 Austrians in the top 10? Not uncommon. The other countries catched up, unfortunately, so we bred Gregor Schlierenzauer to seize ski jumping.

If this guy looks a bit young to you it's because he won his first world cup jump at age 16 (2006). He won the world cup two times until now (3 times 2nd) and currently holds five hill records.

Looking at his cap...

12) Notable Austrian companies. Yes, there are some.

Red Bull (51 % belong to Dietrich Mateschitz)

AKG (originally founded in Vienna 1947)

Glock

Steyr

KTM

Swarovski (jewelry, not cars)

There are more, but I don't know how known they are outside of Austria/Europe.