How to be considered brainy: Grab printed paper, look skeptical, read. Or at least pretend to.

It's quite simple to be considered as a clever companion one loves to be surrounded by in Austria. You just need to be a male Austrian (or look and talk as one) and read something that at least looks approximately like a newspaper.
Whoever keeps themself updated with some crap consisting of letters and stuff rapidly is regarded as well-read and knowledgeable. And, as we all know here in Austria, newspapers (as well as executive officers) are always right - completely irrespective of the issue they're confronted with.
Now, as you gathered this great knowledge of the profound austrian mindset you're officially prepared to go out and make your first austrian friends, chop chop!

In the meantime, I'm trying to groom you for the rubbish you'll encounter sooner or later when consuming our daily and precious journalistic achievements.
For example, quite recently I read a short article on homosexuality in Der Grazer (whom I already mentioned). To my surprise, it wasn't one of those 'it's-unnatural-and-condemnable-inputs' for a change. Quite the contrary, they even pointed out that nowadays gays still get bullied, mobbed, ostracized and repudiated. They demanded for more tolerance which I too think is absolutely necessary.
But then there was this point at which one easily could notice: Something's wrong with this article. Obviously, the author actually never really occupied themself enough with this topic to be considered informed sufficiently for writing a contribution of this kind. The opposite of good is well-meant, as we all know.
As a closing argument, the author seriously wrote that even Life Ball, Tuntenball and the Loveparade can't hide those facts of missing tolerance.
Well, let's see... has the intention behind those events ever been to cover that up? One couldn't be farer away from the truth. But I think, if you read up on them a bit for yourself, you'll figure that out quite soon.

As a next real gem of austrian journalism I'd like to mention Weekend (Warning: danger of eye and ear cancer). They just can't help raising rankings of the '500 most important Styrians'.
In this list there are about 30 to 40 women. Let's take one moment to think about what that's supposed to tell us exactly. Now, I'm going to intersperse the facts that the top positions are taken by some irrelevant CEOs that wouldn't do anything besides hoarding money and politicians like the one I mentioned in the previous post whereas feminists, human respectively animal rights activists or people crucially engaged in the cultural sector apparently aren't worth mentioning.
Rings a bell? Mighty fine!
This is just the halfway bearable tip of the iceberg. Since I'm of good nature, I won't overstrain you this soon. In fact, I'm even granting you a little sit-down.

For this purpose I'll save us the pearls like Oesterreich and the Krone this once and cover them in later posts when it comes to establishing oneself in a political career (surely an important point for your future life in Austria). We'll still have enough to examine in the matter of austrian journalism.

Just one last thing as a little cherry on the icing, coming from OE 3: "Canadian punk sure is extraordinary, incomparable to other Punk subgenres. All the punks in Canada dress themselves in a very colorful manner."

Unbelievable, isn't it?



Oh yeah, before I forget: Here's the Austrian mentality squeezed in appropriate(ly goony) music.
Why the X-mas-theme?
Doesn't matter. In Austria, there's no need for a point in anything, is there?