Surströmming v Fondue

November 9, 2023 12:04 AM

Last month USA President Biden, following in the footsteps of Carter and Bush Jr., confused two European Sw* countries. Visit Sweden, Sweden’s National Tourism Organisation, put out an ELI5: Sweden is not Switzerland [2m] Jacques Pitteloud, the Swiss ambassador to the USA, responded with Switzerland is not Sweden [3½m]

Swaziland Eswatini have put themselves out of this race but are prepared to go toe-to-toe with Estonia.

posted by BobTheScientist (37 comments total)

That's so nice. Cheers to both countries for being nice and silly.
posted by mumimor at 12:31 AM on November 9, 2023 [3 favorites]

I'm not sure the very best thing about Switzerland but the flag is a big plus.
posted by an octopus IRL at 2:36 AM on November 9, 2023 [19 favorites]

Interestingly I came in to make the opposite observation (from Switzer, I mean Swedenland)... I was like GUYS! Could you be more boring? The Swedish one is typically humourless in it's attempt at governmental/corporate humour and isn't particularly generous towards Switzerland, it is, as we say here "kicking down". This could have been done with more joy and also a better rooftop club if it's supposed to be from the tourist office! The various "america first, XX second" videos responding to Trump had more of the right tone.

My family and others at home still, after like 25 years are "where is it you are again, Switzerland?"
posted by Iteki at 3:51 AM on November 9, 2023 [1 favorite]

On two different occasions when I was dating in DC I fumbled the date by confusing Venice and Vienna

Now that I’ve visited both cities I’m still pretty sure that I could mess this up again and I don’t even have childhood stuttering to overcome like Biden does
posted by Skwirl at 4:43 AM on November 9, 2023

Wait until they hear about the Finnish name for Finland.
posted by ricochet biscuit at 5:17 AM on November 9, 2023 [3 favorites]

Apparently there is an office in the Vienna Airport simply for people who have flown to Austria when they meant to fly to Australia.
posted by hippybear at 6:27 AM on November 9, 2023 [4 favorites]

Wait until they hear about the Finnish name for Finland.

If I get it wrong, Suomi.
posted by k3ninho at 6:28 AM on November 9, 2023 [5 favorites]

Apparently there is an office in the Vienna Airport simply for people who have flown to Austria when they meant to fly to Australia.

The internet rumour was that this desk was at Salzburg airport rather than Vienna airport. It was actually not the case that this existed, it was suggested as part of an advertising campaign.
posted by biffa at 6:48 AM on November 9, 2023 [4 favorites]

where is it you are again, Switzerland?

Switzerland is located where you find a stranger in the Alps.
posted by eustatic at 8:19 AM on November 9, 2023 [2 favorites]

In Portuguese it's even worse: Suiça and Suécia.

That said, they also call the capital of Austria "Viena de Austria" because there is a town in northern Portugal called "Viana do Castelo" and you wouldn't want to mix them up now would you?

As for that internet rumor, this story from 1985 is true.
posted by chavenet at 8:28 AM on November 9, 2023 [3 favorites]

On two different occasions when I was dating in DC I fumbled the date by confusing Venice and Vienna

Music video director Russell Mulcahy says he wrote up an entire storyboard involving a gondola race and fight for the music video for the song Vienna so you are in good company.
posted by The_Vegetables at 8:40 AM on November 9, 2023 [4 favorites]

I feel fortunate that there is nothing confusing about Georgia.
posted by TedW at 8:43 AM on November 9, 2023 [3 favorites]

I feel fortunate that there is nothing confusing about Georgia.

It's always on my, my, my, my, my, my, my, my, my mind
posted by chavenet at 8:51 AM on November 9, 2023 [3 favorites]

I have been on the midnight train to Georgia! IIRC Baku to Tblisi. I got drunk and sang the song to my colleagues en route.
posted by Meatbomb at 8:55 AM on November 9, 2023 [6 favorites]

> I feel fortunate that there is nothing confusing about Georgia.

galicia.

no, wait, let me revise that.

fuckin' galicia.
posted by bombastic lowercase pronouncements at 9:09 AM on November 9, 2023

Iteki: isn't particularly generous towards Switzerland, it is, as we say here "kicking down".

Down? I mean, have you seen Switzerland?
posted by Too-Ticky at 9:23 AM on November 9, 2023 [3 favorites]

we went down to Mexico with a group, we had a rental van scheduled. we had tons of gear and luggage and a 4 year old. we are at the rental place, in San Jose del Cabo. but they don't have our van. what?? my husband reserved it weeks ago.

well, it turned out we had a van waiting for us, in San Jose...Costa Rica!!!! ahhhh
ultimately they were able to work it out for us, but that was stressful! make sure you know where you are going and make sure you know where you are!
posted by supermedusa at 10:01 AM on November 9, 2023

"Wherever you go, there you are." -B. Banzai
posted by Meatbomb at 10:50 AM on November 9, 2023 [3 favorites]

make sure you know where you are going and make sure you know where you are!

was completely freaking out one time because my flight itinerary from Phoenix to San Francisco had a connection in Ontario CA

finally put it together that CA meant California, not Canada

why do we even have an Ontario, California, that's clearly just gonna cause problems
posted by taquito sunrise at 11:48 AM on November 9, 2023 [2 favorites]

why do we even have an Ontario, California, that's clearly just gonna cause problems

Towns on the East Coast of North America are named after the European cities that settlers came from or the Natives that they displaced. Towns on the West Coast are named after the East Coast cities that settlers came from* or the Spaniards that they displaced, For Ontario, California, this was two brothers from Ontario, Canada.

My closest example of a costly place confusion was I needed to book a flight to Melbourne, Australia for work and was at the checkout page on an airline and realizing the the flight time was weirdly short ... oh, that's because I was booking a ticket for Melbourne, Florida.

* This small maxim was fixed in my mind when my wife and I were curious about whether or not Beverly Hills was named for a woman, and it turns out that its origin is tied to a real estate developer from the North Shore of Massachusetts.
posted by bl1nk at 12:11 PM on November 9, 2023 [2 favorites]

I once heard of a DJ who arranged a gig in Warsaw (Poland). Unfortunately his gear didn't turn up; they had delivered it to Walsall (UK).
posted by Cardinal Fang at 12:29 PM on November 9, 2023

Not on the same level but when I used to ride the PATH (Port Authority Trans-Hudson) trains I more than once ran across someone who wound up at Newark when they wanted to go to New York.
posted by DanSachs at 1:55 PM on November 9, 2023

Wait until they hear about the Finnish name for Finland.

So wait -- "Suomi, how I love ya" actually isnʻt about Finnish patriotism?

Terribly sorry, please to forgive.
posted by Droll Lord at 2:09 PM on November 9, 2023

Music video director Russell Mulcahy says he wrote up an entire storyboard involving a gondola race and fight for the music video for the song Vienna yt so you are in good company.

This means nothing to me
posted by srboisvert at 2:15 PM on November 9, 2023 [4 favorites]

This means nothing to me

Slow down you crazy child
posted by chavenet at 3:54 PM on November 9, 2023

Once met a guy in St Johns, Newfoundland who was hoofing it because he'd arranged a rental car in Saint John, New Brunswick.
posted by Chef Flamboyardee at 4:31 PM on November 9, 2023

I used to work near a little village called Oddense, population 577. There would regularly be giant HGVs turning up there, looking for logistics hubs, businesses, shops, etc, that were located in Odense (population 200,000+, one of the five largest cities in Denmark). These HGVs would usually have come from somewhere else in Europe. This means that they'd have gone 150km north past where they should have turned right across a bridge, to Fyn. The drivers rarely saw the humour in this.
posted by Dysk at 6:01 PM on November 9, 2023 [1 favorite]

(Fun bonus fact: due to local dialect, 'Oddense' is not pronounced at all like Odense. No way you could mistake them spoken. Oddense is instead pronounced almost identically to Vojens, which is another layer of confusion, not least for anyone outside the area trying to work out how those letters can lead to those sounds.)
posted by Dysk at 6:04 PM on November 9, 2023 [3 favorites]

(And due to the way Danish is spoken, to my non-Danish ears even 'Odense' is not pronounced at all like Odense. I've learned to skip the D and make a sort of glottal stop instead, and it's the closest I (as a non-Danish person) can get to a pronunciation that, while not correct, the locals will understand as meaning Odense. Danish is fun!
Sorry for the interruption.)
posted by Too-Ticky at 12:44 AM on November 10, 2023 [2 favorites]

It's a soft d in the middle of Odense, like the Icelandic Ð/ð I think? It's sort of like the beginning of the English "th" sound like at the start of "the" but without the breathy follow-through.

It is a pretty silly language.
posted by Dysk at 1:53 AM on November 10, 2023 [1 favorite]

A friend also arrived to meet his wife and child on holiday in Las Palmas, instead of in Palma. Palma often being referred to as Palma de Mallorcca, to not get confused with the similarly named town in the Canary Islands, also "Spain", but a mere 2000 kilometers away off the coast of Africa.
posted by Iteki at 4:06 AM on November 10, 2023

I guess this has become kind of obligatory when we discuss it: Danish Language
posted by mumimor at 6:47 AM on November 10, 2023 [1 favorite]

Dysk: It is a pretty silly language.

Danish gets a little easier once you figure out which half of any word should not be pronounced.
posted by Stoneshop at 9:29 AM on November 10, 2023 [1 favorite]

Ah, but it is typically all pronounced, just incredibly subtly. My husband (who is learning) doesn't always believe me when I say that, but it's true, at least to us native speakers! The bits that are 'missing' aren't just omitted, they inflect the syllables around them.
posted by Dysk at 9:40 AM on November 10, 2023 [2 favorites]

I have a friend who meant to fly to Budapest and instead went to Bucharest. A few years later when she went on vacation in Portland, ME, you can imagine what we asked her.
posted by acrasis at 10:08 AM on November 10, 2023

"The Meaning of Liff" has a map for every chapter showing the cities and villages whose names are put to a better use than just "loafing about on signposts pointing at places". Some of them, like Hull, Banff and Seattle will have multiple arrows pointing all over the Earth.
posted by Stoneshop at 2:35 PM on November 10, 2023

It's a summer afternoon in 1991. My dad has just returned to meet the rest of the family on platform 14 of the Paris Est station after racing to the Hard Rock Cafe in a taxi to buy shirts for my little brother and me in time for us to catch the train to Lucerne. The restaurant hasn't opened yet, but the merch store has.

We (mom, dad, brother and I) have a hotel booked in Lucerne, one of several stops on our whirlwind, 3-week tour of Europe -- my high school graduation present.

We have Eurrail passes, so no tickets with our destination printed on them. There are no direct trains to Lucerne, so the departure boards aren't helpful. Out of an abundance of caution, dad decided to confirm that we were on the right platform.

Dad, to the Parisienne at the info booth: We're traveling to Lucerne, Switzerland - are we on the right platform?
Parisienne: LohSAHN?
Dad: Lucerne, Switzerland!
Parisienne: LohSAHN?
Dad: Switzerland! Lucerne!
Parisienne: LohSAHN?
Dad: Yes, Lucerne, Switzerland!
Parisienne, in heavily accented English: The train to LohSAHN leaves from platform 1, but you must hurry!

We rush to platform 1 with minutes to spare, a feat made considerably more difficult by my mom's abundance of suitcases, one of which she shipped back to Houston later on our trip. We made it just in time to get ourselves and our luggage into the train before it pulled out of the station.

And that's how my dad ended up paying $386 plus tip for the family to take a two-and-a-half hour taxi ride from Lausanne to Lucerne.
posted by syzygy at 4:44 AM on November 12, 2023 [1 favorite]