Mozart’s Salzburg and the Crazy T-shirt.

I used to visit Vienna frequently on business trips, but never managed to visit nearby Salzburg (a hill of salts). Then I travelled to Vienna once as a tourist along with my wife Indira on our way to the USA. Our Vienna hosts were Hans Kauffman and his charming wife Heidi, and they put us in a 5-star hotel close to their apartment at a 75% discount.

Hans was a retired Austrian diplomat— the Trade Commissioner in Delhi for several years and then in Tel Aviv as the Austrian Ambassador. He advised us to travel to Salzburg by car (and not by train) and adds mischievously that about 20 km before our destination Salzburg, we take a break at a village pub. He says that the village has a remarkably interesting name, and we can find out that interesting name on our own, if we are alert about the roadside signboards, as we would be getting closer to Salzburg. That created a little more interest, what that interesting (or, surprising) name could be?

Our car ride was truly memorable; through the beautiful, serene and cool Austrian countryside. I was watching the milestones as Salzburg was approaching. Suddenly, I noticed an English signboard on our right. It reads: FOOKING, DRIVE SLOW.

Oh my God!!!!

Though the German tongue would pronounce it Fooking, but its spelling on the signboard was exactly that of the unprintable English expression that begins with an F. I am now curious and so the driver was asked to slow down, and we halt at the sole village pub. We order for draft beer for me and the driver, and Viennese coffee for Indira and settle down.

It was a cozy and cute pub, but very crowded, most of the customers being noisy youths and speaking animated English. They are either heading to or returning from Salzburg. The busy waiters were very young, handsome and pretty boys and girls, probably from the local school and working here during their summer break.

All these angels of boys and girls were wearing the same pub uniform, a white T-shirt with an English message in bold prints on their chaste and bosom and on their back, that boldly declares— I LOVE FOOKING (spelling the same as the English four-letter word).  In that happy pub, at that moment, this bold massage seemed more hilarious than outrageous. These T-shirts were also on sale from the pub counter. I wanted to buy a few as my presents to a few of my more adventurous friends back home but was stopped by Indira from doing so. The village T- shirts were real collector’s item. They were selling cheap too. My only regret is I did not buy half a dozen of T- shirts with the message I LOVE FOOKING for me and my friends. But then also thought of my age, and what the Indian reaction would be.

Back in Vienna, Hans was a bit disappointed that we did not collect any T-shirt. He says it was a much sought-after collector’s item for the tourists. Then Hans quotes for our benefit, from a famous saying about Salzburg: “The Germans all went to see Mozart’s house in Salzburg; the Americans went to see where Sound of Music was filmed; the Japanese went to Hitler’s birthplace at Braunau (a small town close to Salzburg). BUT, for the British, it is all about FOOKING.”

(Re-written. May 24, 2021)

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Editorial additions (to share a little bit of history)

Fugging (German: [ˈfʊkɪŋ] (listen)), spelt F***ing until 2021, is an Austrian village which lies north of Salzburg near the German border, in the municipality of Tarsdorf, located in the Innviertel region of western Upper Austria. The village is 33 km (21 mi) north of Salzburg. The name of the town has no meaning in German. A 2004 vote on changing the village’s name failed. Locals were frustrated by the thefts of the town signboards by tourists and of people photographing the signboard. Finally, the villagers, known as Fuckingers, “had enough of visitors and their bad jokes”, wrote Austrian daily Die Prese. So, the small community in Upper Austria of around 100 people has been pushing for a name change for years. The council of Tarsdorf voted in their 17 November 2020 session to have the village’s name officially changed to Fugging (pronounced the same as F***ing in the dialect spoken in the region), effective 1 January 2021.

The theft of signboards was, because many thought it’s a collector’s item. So the local authorities put up the signboard at a 2m height and embed it in theft-resistant concrete to avoid thefts.

Locals had previously found their village in the news after it was the backdrop for a book by Austrian novelist Kurt Palm, which was later turned into a film named Bad F***ing.

“I really don’t want to say anything more – we’ve had enough media frenzy about this in the past,” she told the regional daily Oberösterreichische Nachrichten (OOeN), said Andrea Holzner, the mayor of Tarsdorf, the municipality to which the village belongs.