How similar are Germany and Austria? How different are they?

[Filuwaúrdjan]

Germany is a proper country. Austria is a surreal union of an ancient imperial capital and a couple of hick provinces most of which aren't even part of said ancient imperial capital's hinterland.

[Filuwaúrdjan]

Partly right, at least up to Napoleon. Said capital's hinterland, let's define it as Cisleithana, shall we! did include all of modern Austria (well apart from the Burgenland), however, modern (German)-Austria doesn't include all of these hinterlands even if those being divided by language lines (ever heard of South Tyrol, the Sudetes, Brno and Maribor?). Not that I want to undertake some good old historical revisionism here (quite a strong case could be made for South Tyrol though, if people wanted), but just pointing that out.

I was mostly being facetious, but can you really argue that Tyrol counts as Viennese hinterland? Or even Styria for that matter, though of course only parts of both historic provinces are even in Austria today.

[Filuwaúrdjan]

Burgenland is hilarious though. What do we even call this strip of land? It has no name! Wait! It has some castles. Castleland it is!

[Filuwaúrdjan]

Why would Wallonia even want to be part of France? No matter how rough the past few decades have been for the place you only have to nip across the border to see how much worse it could be: as a part of France the area would not just be a postindustrial basketcase, but an ignored postindustrial basketcase.