Since many Polish people seldomly hear German (at least some time ago, now there are many German tourists in Cracow, Wrocław and so on) apart from the crappy "halt" [xalt] and "Ausweise, bitte" [auzvaizE bit:E] dialogues in communist anti-Hitler movies, they are convinced that German sounds harsh and choppy. So when some classmates overheard me and my brother speaking German, they supposed (knowing that we are from Austria) that we speak "Austrian"...
Levo wrote:By the way my second-cousins in Canada asked me if I have a television...I was so surprised I couldn't say anything for the first seconds, then the oldest one came closer and asked slowly:
"Do you know what a television is?"
Emberassing for me: We had Polish friends visiting us in Austria, and we went with them to visit Austrian friends. Marek (one of my Polish friends) took a game boy and looked at the back side to see which game was plugged in. Martin (one of my Austrian friends) saw that and told Markek, pointing at the device: "Game boy. Gaaaame boooy."
Showed our Polish friends exactly how Austrians think about Poland. This happened ten years ago, though. Now most people know that Poles have highways, electric kitchen stoves and fridges...