Tourists look for kangaroos in Austria, fans mix up Budapest and Bucharest

Recently, Euroradio told about the plans of the European countries to attract more rich tourists from China. However, it turned out that the Chinese sometimes hardly imagine where they go and mix up Sweden and Switzerland. In order to avoid this embarrassing situation, these countries' consular departments started an image campaign in Shanghai. According to the news portal 20 Minuten, the Chinese are suggested to make a humorous sketch of the differences between the two countries.

"The contest suggests a lot of cliches: Switzerland being a country of banks and expensive watches while Sweden is meatballs and IKEA furniture. The winner gets a 12-days tour to both countries," writes 20 Minuten.

Source: spiegel.de

The next country that has serious problems with the international identification is the Czech Republic. It may seem that 20 years of independence along with the famous names of writer and politician Vaclav Havel, film director Milos Forman and hockey-player Jaromir Jagr made the country recognizable. However, it's not the case. Boston terrorist act in April and supposed 'Chechen trace' outraged the American internet-users against... the Czech Republic!

"I couldn't believe it when I first saw it," says Jagr's teammate in Boston Bruins David Krejčí. "How could these people make such a mistake? I think they never went to school."

The Czech Republic's neighbouring Austria is often mixed up with the green continent, Australia. This is why the European country launched the campaign 'No kangaroos in Austria' - you can see the posters with such slogan in the Austrian streets.

Meanwhile, Austria and the Czech Republic both suffered from the BBC - the British channel interchanged the positions of the countries in the documentary movie before Euro-2012. It also renamed Serbia into Yugoslavia on the map in this movie.

Besides, it is not a rare occurrence when they mix up the names of cities and countries in football. In 2008 in the Czech Republic, a Latvian flag was printed in the program of the game against Lithuania. They also played the Latvian anthem. A group of fans from Bosnia and Herzegovina also mixed up the two Baltic states and arrived to Riga to support their team in the game against... Lithuania.

"When we landed it was very quiet around, our fans were unheard. We asked the passers-by where we should go to get to the stadium, in English. We said we had arrived from Bosnia and they laughed and told we were very far from the stadium," the Bosnian fan says.

Last year, 400 fans of Atletico Bilbao also demonstrated their 'knowledge' of geography. Instead of Bucharest that hosted the Europa League final in which their team played, they arrived to Budapest. When they realized the mistake, they tried to get to the Romanian capital (about 820 kilometers) but it was too late.

Photo: everydaydreamholiday.com