This Town Can Leave You Breathless
©2007, Gordon Kirkland

I have run into some pretty strange town names in my travels. Dildo, Newfoundland in Canada and Toad Suck, Arkansas in the US have to be near the top of any list.

The hands down winner is a little village in Austria, north of Salzburg. I have never personally visited the place, but I was alerted to its existence a few weeks ago. I have no idea what the name translates into in English, but there is little doubt that taking the name, as it appears on the map, will raise more than a few eyebrows.

I can’t imagine what it must be like to be a resident of this village traveling abroad and having to tell some customs officer that you’re from Fucking, Austria.

I checked the internet for information about Fucking. You can imagine what I found. (Truth be told, some of what I found was beyond imagination, but that’s another story.) I decided I had better add ‘Austria’ to my search request. Sure enough, that led me to several sites about the oddly named little town.

From what I learned, much of the town’s budget is spent replacing the Fucking town name signs. They are now putting the Fucking signs in cement and welding them to the poles to deter the Fucking sign thieves. In the news item I read, Siegfried Hauppl, the Fucking mayor, is pleading with people to stop stealing the Fucking sign, but he’s not having much luck.

“Fucking has existed for 800 years, probably when a Mr. Fuck or the Fuck family moved into the area,” he said. “We all know what it means now, but for us, Fucking is Fucking we don’t give it a second thought.”

I doubt if he is the only Fucking politician with an opinion about it.

In 2004, the 93 Fuckers living in Fucking held an election to decide whether or not to change the name of their town. In the end, they decided that you can’t change centuries of Fucking history, and the Fuckers kept the Fucking name.

Perhaps it might help if the sign was reworded,. I saw several pictures of the Fucking sign. It says, “Fucking. Bitte – nicht so schnell.” In English that’s “Fucking. Not so fast.” Rumor has it that a lot of the thieves are women planning to put it in their bedrooms, but I have no idea why they would want to do that. Wome seem to do things like that and men just don't get them. A friend of mine could never understand why his wife bought someone's garage sale sign and hung it up in their bedroom. It said, "Please don't come early."

I checked the travel site that I use to arrange my air flights and hotels. I couldn’t find a Fucking airport or a Fucking hotel. There wasn’t even a Fucking car rental agency. I’m sure if the Fuckers could just convince someone to open a Fucking Holiday Inn or even a Fucking Motel Six, it would add a great deal to the Fucking economy.

There doesn’t seem to be a Fucking chamber of commerce. I couldn’t get any information about the businesses that have chosen to locate there. I’m pretty sure that, as with just about anywhere you might go, there are Fucking bankers. You can be sure that there is a Fucking lawyer around there someplace.

Travelers might not steal the Fucking sign so often if some Fucking businessperson opened a Fucking souvenir shop. I think there would be a brisk market for Fucking postcards, Fucking t-shirts, and even those Fucking snow globes. My wife collects souvenir teaspoons. I’m sure she’d like to add one of their Fucking spoons to her collection.

There are a lot of things that the Fucking powers-that-be could do to encourage more Fucking tourism. Austria is noted for its winter sports. Perhaps they could open a Fucking ski hill for tourists to whiz down. There might be a few people who would enjoy the more relaxed pace of a Fucking curling club. I, for one, would happily cheer on a Fucking hockey team. I've been a fan of the Toronto Maple Leafs for my whole life, and with their ability to wrestle defeat out of the jaws of victory, I have often called them a Fucking Hockey Team.

I don’t really see what all the fuss is about. I’m sure that all of my readers are worldly enough to realize that in Austrian the Fucking town name rhymes with the word ‘cooking.’