# Do idiots travel to Austria expecting Australia, and vice-versa? **URL:** \ **Category:** Factual Questions\ **Created:** [December 30, 2011, 4:05am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/do-idiots-travel-to-austria-expecting-australia-and-vice-versa/607795 "2011-12-30T04:05:52Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 4
**Author:** ![Darth\_Panda](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/ee7513/32.png) [@Darth\_Panda](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Darth_Panda)\ **Post date:** [December 31, 2011, 2:47am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/do-idiots-travel-to-austria-expecting-australia-and-vice-versa/607795/61 "2011-12-31T02:47:09Z")
> [@These are my own pants](#): > > Has anyone ever gone to Australia expecting to arrive in the European dark age Frankish kingdom of Austrasia? I keep worrying about people showing up in Charlotte looking for the Carolingians. ---
**Author:** ![Leo\_Bloom](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/leo_bloom/32/10377_2.png) [@Leo\_Bloom](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Leo_Bloom)\ **Post date:** [December 31, 2011, 3:23am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/do-idiots-travel-to-austria-expecting-australia-and-vice-versa/607795/62 "2011-12-31T03:23:33Z")
Columbus made a similar mistake, it could be claimed. ---
**Author:** ![Darth\_Panda](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/ee7513/32.png) [@Darth\_Panda](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Darth_Panda)\ **Post date:** [December 31, 2011, 3:43am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/do-idiots-travel-to-austria-expecting-australia-and-vice-versa/607795/63 "2011-12-31T03:43:06Z")
Columbus has a bad enough reputation without you claiming that he sailed around the world looking for a sorter passage to Austria… ---
**Author:** ![foolsguinea](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/foolsguinea/32/14751_2.png) [@foolsguinea](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/foolsguinea)\ **Post date:** [December 31, 2011, 4:31am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/do-idiots-travel-to-austria-expecting-australia-and-vice-versa/607795/64 "2011-12-31T04:31:04Z")
> [@Tim\_R.Mortiss](#): > > I remember a movie once where a character accidentally booked a vacation trip to Haiti, intending to go to Tahiti. It was fictional, of course, but it struck me as the kind of mistake that could be believable. “Ayiti”, “Tahiti,” I can see that. > [@thelurkinghorror](#): > > Peripherally related, but I have heard tales of people wanting to ski in a nice, snowy Scandinavian country. So they book a flight to Denmark (max elevation 170.86 m / 560.56 ft). Maybe similar things can be said about skiing/mountain climbing in Illinois, Louisiana, or Florida. It doesn’t snow in Denmark either, I’m told. > [@campp](#): > > When I lived in Idaho, I discovered many Americans don’t really know the difference between Idaho and Iowa. They thought cheese came from Idaho and potatos came from Iowa. Silly, cheese comes from Wisconsin! 😉 One advantage of living in the central US is that one can eventually get states sorted by their rough direction and distance from one’s own. But you still have to work at it a bit. ---
**Author:** ![brocks](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/7feea3/32.png) [@brocks](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/brocks)\ **Post date:** [December 31, 2011, 9:56am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/do-idiots-travel-to-austria-expecting-australia-and-vice-versa/607795/65 "2011-12-31T09:56:30Z")
> [@Mr.Kobayashi](#): > > **Do idiots travel to Austria expecting Australia, and vice-versa?** No, I don’t. ---
**Author:** ![don\_t\_ask](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/e68b1a/32.png) [@don\_t\_ask](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/don_t_ask)\ **Post date:** [December 31, 2011, 10:45am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/do-idiots-travel-to-austria-expecting-australia-and-vice-versa/607795/66 "2011-12-31T10:45:44Z")
> [@Shmendrik](#): > > Wait, Australians speak English now? Ja, warum sie bitten. ---
**Author:** ![Alessan](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/alessan/32/465_2.png) [@Alessan](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Alessan)\ **Post date:** [December 31, 2011, 11:24am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/do-idiots-travel-to-austria-expecting-australia-and-vice-versa/607795/67 "2011-12-31T11:24:38Z")
> [@Tim\_R.Mortiss](#): > > I remember a movie once where a character accidentally booked a vacation trip to Haiti, intending to go to Tahiti. It was fictional, of course, but it struck me as the kind of mistake that could be believable. Bill Paxton, from the film _Ruthless People_. ---
**Author:** ![Kevbo](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/k/e47774/32.png) [@Kevbo](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Kevbo)\ **Post date:** [December 31, 2011, 4:01pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/do-idiots-travel-to-austria-expecting-australia-and-vice-versa/607795/68 "2011-12-31T16:01:52Z")
A former employer sold a lot of stuff to the IAEA, headquartered in Vienna. After more than one shipment was delayed by misrouting, we started addressing parcels " Vienna,Austria,EUROPE". Also when Kevbabe came to visit when I was working over there, one of her orkers asked if she could bring back a boomerang. ---
**Author:** ![kanicbird](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/k/5f8ce5/32.png) [@kanicbird](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/kanicbird)\ **Post date:** [December 31, 2011, 4:11pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/do-idiots-travel-to-austria-expecting-australia-and-vice-versa/607795/69 "2011-12-31T16:11:06Z")
> [@AK84](#): > > Strikes me as unlikely, when a domestic flight becomes an international international after a stop, IME the passengers are disembarked and issued new boarding passes and their passports checked. The person may have gotten on the plane in Canada, had a stop in the US then NZ, so the passports would have already been checked. ---
**Author:** ![Colibri](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/colibri/32/1841_2.png) [@Colibri](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Colibri)\ **Post date:** [December 31, 2011, 4:53pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/do-idiots-travel-to-austria-expecting-australia-and-vice-versa/607795/70 "2011-12-31T16:53:44Z")
> [@kanicbird](#): > > The person may have gotten on the plane in Canada, had a stop in the US then NZ, so the passports would have already been checked. See the link in post #17. ---
**Author:** ![DaveBfd](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/c6cbf5/32.png) [@DaveBfd](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/DaveBfd)\ **Post date:** [January 2, 2012, 8:40am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/do-idiots-travel-to-austria-expecting-australia-and-vice-versa/607795/71 "2012-01-02T08:40:06Z")
“Guten Tag, Mate” ---
**Author:** ![Nava](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/n/da6949/32.png) [@Nava](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Nava)\ **Post date:** [January 2, 2012, 9:43am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/do-idiots-travel-to-austria-expecting-australia-and-vice-versa/607795/72 "2012-01-02T09:43:17Z")
> [@mnemosyne](#): > > Among other changes in response to this crash, the ROZO waypoint has been replaced with PALMA, “PL”. Hopefully they won’t try to fly to Gran Canaria or Mallorca now (the respective capitals are Las Palmas and Palma). > [@troubledwater](#): > > I was traveling alone in 1994, in Spain, armed with high school/one-semester-of-college Spanish, when I made a point of being _very_ careful _not_ to become a character in one of these stories. I had to book tickets to St. Petersburg, Russia and make sure that my obvious American accent didn’t lead to a ticket to St. Petersburg, Florida. The agent was pretty incredulous, but I was pretty insistent. It would have taken a superb travel agent simply to know that there was a St. Petersburg in Florida as well as the original San Petersburgo; you probably were safe 🙂 Airports can be a royal pain in the ass if the traveler or their agent aren’t careful. **constanze** and others have already mentioned those cheap companies which do things such as sell Noáin airport as Bilbao or Saragossa as Barcelona (in both cases, 3-4h away by car if you already know the way). I once got sent from a location 1h west of Saragossa to one in SE Switzerland in a hurry; I don’t think the travel agent checked where I was starting from or where the final destination was, she booked me Barcelona-Milano in the afternoon (arrival 23:30) and Milano-Zurich the next morning (leaving at 7:15) and a five-star hotel smack in the center of Milano. The airport was 90 minutes from downtown Milano with no traffic and an Italian driver (read: they’re not suicidal but they fake it well); of three airports sold as “Milano”, she’d managed to pick the most-distant one. The look in the receptionist’s face when I told him I’d need a wake-up call and cab, and the time, was priceless. The half-rate for using the room during four hours only was nice, but I still would have preferred being able to verify that the dark shape outside my window was, indeed, the cathedral. Add two six-hour train trips (one from where I was to Barcelona, one from Zurich to where I was going) and for a trip which didn’t involve any “wrong codes” per se it sure was a nightmare. ---
**Author:** ![Floater](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/f/dc4da7/32.png) [@Floater](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Floater)\ **Post date:** [January 2, 2012, 10:16am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/do-idiots-travel-to-austria-expecting-australia-and-vice-versa/607795/73 "2012-01-02T10:16:58Z")
> [@Toucanna](#): > > … I constantly confused Suecia “SWEH syah” (Sweden) with Suiza “SWEE sah” (Switzerland). I have read about that mistake every number of times in fictional books, but only once have I encountered it myself and this was in Lisbon. I just remembered how a friend of mine, a well travelled person who has been all over the World, was going to Goa (I don’t recall where he started, but it was somewhere in Europe) and landed at GOA (Genoa). For some reason everybody loves to remind him. ---
**Author:** ![Peter\_Morris](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/peter_morris/32/359_2.png) [@Peter\_Morris](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Peter_Morris)\ **Post date:** [January 2, 2012, 10:38am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/do-idiots-travel-to-austria-expecting-australia-and-vice-versa/607795/74 "2012-01-02T10:38:25Z")
> [@Jake\_Jones](#): > > I was seated on the plane near an early 20s young woman on the phone with her mother, who was on the other end busily booking travel from San Jose, California to San Jose, Costa Rica for her daughter… She didn’t seem particularly dumb, either … I felt horrible for her, but I still can’t understand how anyone could possibly fuck up air travel that badly. She’d been away so long, she went wrong and lost her way. I had some distant relatives who frequently travelled back and forth between the UK and Australia. When my father needed to send them a package there was some brief confusion, because he wasn’t sure if they were currently staying in South Wales, or New South Wales. It was resolved satisfactorily, and the package arrived safely. Has anyone ever aimed for Baden-Baden, but ended up in Baden? ---
**Author:** ![KKKK](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/k/48db29/32.png) [@KKKK](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/KKKK)\ **Post date:** [January 2, 2012, 12:57pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/do-idiots-travel-to-austria-expecting-australia-and-vice-versa/607795/75 "2012-01-02T12:57:43Z")
This isn’t countries, but – passengers (especially Western) frequently mixed up Jaipur (Rajasthan, India) with Jodhpur (also Rajasthan, India, but 200 miles away). Working at Jodhpur Airport, we used to have to locate passengers for Jaipur who had disembarked at the wrong airport – apparently, to them, all ‘purs’ sounded alike… ---
**Author:** ![LightWithoutHeattttttttttttttt](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/l/bc8723/32.png) [@LightWithoutHeattttttttttttttt](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/LightWithoutHeattttttttttttttt)\ **Post date:** [January 2, 2012, 1:08pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/do-idiots-travel-to-austria-expecting-australia-and-vice-versa/607795/76 "2012-01-02T13:08:43Z")
Slightly off-topic, but one of my wife’s friends went to New Zealand for a summer vacation without realizing that it would be “winter-like” there. BTW, she’s a school teacher (sigh). ---
**Author:** ![amarinth](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/3be4f8/32.png) [@amarinth](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/amarinth)\ **Post date:** [January 2, 2012, 4:35pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/do-idiots-travel-to-austria-expecting-australia-and-vice-versa/607795/77 "2012-01-02T16:35:57Z")
During the Vancouver Olympics, there were many, many stories about people making reservations and a few stories about people ending up in Vancouver WA. About 300 miles south. ---
**Author:** ![leahcim](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/l/b4bc9f/32.png) [@leahcim](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/leahcim)\ **Post date:** [January 2, 2012, 5:29pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/do-idiots-travel-to-austria-expecting-australia-and-vice-versa/607795/78 "2012-01-02T17:29:52Z")
> [@LightWithoutHeattttttttttttttt](#): > > Slightly off-topic, but one of my wife’s friends went to New Zealand for a summer vacation without realizing that it would be “winter-like” there. BTW, she’s a school teacher (sigh). An ungodly number of people think that seasons are caused by the distance from earth to the sun changing and therefore are the same everywhere in the world. Depending on the type of schoolteacher she is, I wouldn’t necessarily expect her to be more knowledgeable. [QUOTE=amarinth] During the Vancouver Olympics, there were many, many stories about people making reservations and a few stories about people ending up in Vancouver WA. About 300 miles south. [/QUOTE] A former boss of mine got caught in this situation. He was going to Vancouver on a business trip, and planned to extend it into a vacation with his girlfriend in a B&B up on Vancouver Island. Turns out the business trip was to the Vancouver in Washington, and he had to scramble to get some transportation between the business trip and the vacation. ---
**Author:** ![Namkcalb](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/n/c89c15/32.png) [@Namkcalb](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Namkcalb)\ **Post date:** [January 3, 2012, 12:29am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/do-idiots-travel-to-austria-expecting-australia-and-vice-versa/607795/79 "2012-01-03T00:29:24Z")
I spent two hours waiting in the Chinese Taipei (defacto) embassy (aka Taiwan), Whilst I was waiting, 5 couriers came in, three of them wanted the [Kingdom of] Thailand embassy. If most professional delivery personnel can’t tell the difference, then it is wrong for a what’s effectively a country to delibrately call themselves something so easy to confuse with a more established nation’s “brand”. Then again, they probably would have the same problem if they promoted themselves as the Republic of China. ---
**Author:** ![Spoons](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/spoons/32/3141_2.png) [@Spoons](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Spoons)\ **Post date:** [January 3, 2012, 12:47am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/do-idiots-travel-to-austria-expecting-australia-and-vice-versa/607795/80 "2012-01-03T00:47:30Z")
> [@LightWithoutHeattttttttttttttt](#): > > Slightly off-topic, but one of my wife’s friends went to New Zealand for a summer vacation without realizing that it would be “winter-like” there. BTW, she’s a school teacher (sigh). Are you sure she didn’t realize that? Australia is not New Zealand, of course, but I travelled to Australia many times during the northern hemisphere’s summer (Australia’s winter), knowing full well that it would be winter there. But I also knew it would be nothing like the winters I was used to in Canada. It was actually a very pleasant time of year to go to the southern hemisphere–warm but not uncomfortably hot, as I understand it can be during the summer. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/do-idiots-travel-to-austria-expecting-australia-and-vice-versa/607795.md?page=3) [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/do-idiots-travel-to-austria-expecting-australia-and-vice-versa/607795.md?page=5)