A tiny Austrian hamlet, population 100, is giving up its thousand-year-old name—Fucking—in hopes of turning away the hordes of mostly-English-speaking visitors who stop at its highway signs to take pictures, often including nudity and rude behavior.
From January 1, the town will officially take on the name Fugging, which seems hardly better, but may spare the town the expense it has gone to as visitors keep stealing the signposts announcing that you have arrived in or are leaving. Even burying the posts in concrete and welding signs to the posts has not helped.
The mayor of the larger town of which the village is a part, told local news agencies “I really don’t want to say anything more — we’ve had enough media frenzy about this in the past.”
Meanwhile, in a likely unrelated incident, police in Bavaria are investigating the disappearance of a two-metre-high wooden penis from a mountain near Rettenberg. The sculpture appeared on the mountain years ago—no one knows just when, or who made it—and has been a popular attraction.
While police are investigating, they are not sure there’s been a crime; the police spokesperson told reporters that “Because so far not even the owner of the sculpture is known, there is no party which can claim damages. It’s possible that even the owner himself had picked up the penis again.”
Saw a photo of the missing “woodie” which as you say is a wooden sculpture and not sure how anyone could carry that thing away unless they flipped on its side and rolled it down the mountain. Could be labeled a sex crime?