Not sure if the author confused it with Australia, which is confusingly mentioned under "Popularity across Europe", or lumps us up with Germany, which misses the fun factoid that we split up again in 1945 (and also tends to get people over here surprisingly pissy).
Considering they mention Australia and South Africa together, then later in the same sentence say it is “ less popular there than in Europe,” I would say with 100% confidence that the author meant to say Australia, not Austria.
After all, Australia is not in Europe so if they had meant Austria then it would be strange to say it’s less popular there than in Europe.
There are also many European countries not mentioned so I don’t think anything is being lumped together.
https://www.sbs.com.au/guide/article/2016/12/19/broadcast-sb...
Maybe not by geography, but by Euro♡ision, it is?
I don’t think anyone is saying “Australia is part of Europe” with a straight face though :-)
This is changing to some extent with demographics (immigration from China and India, and some generational change). But surprisingly slowly and shallowly. Few Australians know much about Asia, or even the Pacific, let alone feel theirselves to be part of it.
> I do not think skin tone should come into it
It shouldn't, but it certainly does. Little can be understood about Australia without it (well, ethnicity at least - broader than 'skin tone'). A large part of Australia's Europe-longing comes from a historical fear of China (as a kind of stand in for people of Asiatic ethnicity).
That’s cute. It’s been a while, but last I checked, there were 10s of broadcasts of it on the different stations throughout the afternoon, evening and night in Germany ;)
We have like 2 or so (?) public broadcasting stations. One of which makes a heroic sacrifice for the audience that wants to see Silversterstadl, so we need to compromise a bit.
Typical Austrian tradition is to get unreasonably shitfaced with friends/relatives throughout the day (same as every other holiday), until you have a sufficiently positive outlook on the new year.
In that state you're then able to bare the presidents new year speech for the purpose of sarcastically mocking it, actually find Mundl's antics afterwards funny and can round it off with "Dinner for One", right before going outside and playing with explosives. If you survive, you get to listen to the final parts of The Blue Danube afterwards.