Mappular amusement
During our 5 day self-guided wander around various parts of Europe, K & I thought that it might be fun to do the obligatory visit to a place with a rude name. It was a bit of an afterthought, admittedly, and not one which we explored with much diligence. In fact, the extent of our planning this side trip was me typing a few rude words into Google Maps to see what would come up that was interesting.
I knew that there’s a town in Austria called Fucking, however that was too far away to conceivably visit. A memory from a previous hunt for amusing place names suddenly popped up though: somewhere around Austria or Germany there’s a mountain called Wank (I now know that it’s in Bavaria, not Austria, and it was a little foolish of me to think that Austria held the monopoly on rude teutonic sites).
Now, Google have done a great job with their map application, and one of its purportedly helpful features is that if you type in a place and search for it, if they can’t find a match for what you’re looking for, they offer a list of helpful suggestions in case that’s what you actually meant.

I’m pleased to report that the iPhone’s first suggestion, when presented with the map query “Wank, Austria” is: The Tate Modern.
Again, due to distance, we never did visit Wank – and sadly therefore didn’t have the opportunity to shake hands with any Wankers. Perhaps another time…









Jason loves experiencing life & getting to know people. Professionally he’s in the Internet business, and loves the way it can be used to do almost anything. He occupies his spare time doing most things that present themselves as possible, such as abseiling down the side of a hospital, attending Crufts, redefining the sport of snowboarding, and morris dancing. His passions include