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Early Sunday here I saw a long report, "Eye on France", on CNN international. It followed "Eye on Russia."

Nobody ever does an "Eye on Austria." But they should. It's a bloody peculiar place. Co-hosting Euro 2008, one of the biggest events in international sports, with a billion watching on TV and millions of soccer fans expected to arrive here, the country is as grumpy as all get-out.

Initially I was all set to feel sorry for Austria. The national team is certainly an underdog. There was the infamous campaign by local soccer fans to have the national team withdraw from Euro 2008 because, well, they said it's a rubbish team. The campaign wasn't ironic. It was dead-serious. I figured it was a poor-old-Austria situation. One always hopes that an underrated host country does well, because it improves the feel-good mood at the tournament. But it's hard to feel sorry for a country and people so blatantly bad-tempered about it all.

Never mind Austria's disdain for its own team. The country might as well put up a "No riff-raff" sign.

A cold coming I had of it. At Vienna airport on Saturday morning I was a tad fatigued after landing from Toronto via Frankfurt. While waiting for the luggage I saw a booth with the Euro 2008 logo and "Welcome" People ready to offer advice and welcome. Or so I thought. I moseyed over to find about the express train into the centre of Vienna. Too tired to try out my wobbly German, I asked, in the polite Canadian way, "May I speak English?" The previously-smiling young woman narrowed her eyes and glared. "Yes, I speak English," she snapped. "And German" So much for the welcome. I left with a map of Vienna, incorrect information about the cost of the express ticket, and a lasting first impression.

I really shouldn't have been surprised. For months I have despaired of finding soccer fans in Austria. In advance of coming here I tried to contact local fans who could tell me about soccer in Austria. I trawled the Internet and found supporter groups online, but I didn't get a single reply to numerous e-mails. Well, there was one, last week, from a young man who said he didn't really want to talk about it.

Actually, according to surveys, half the Austrian population just doesn't care about Euro 2008. And about a quarter of the population dislikes the idea of the tournament, fearing all kinds of disruption to routine and criminals coming in among all those foreigners.

What do Austrians care about? Well, according those same surveys, in sport they care about Skiing and, otherwise, they like the Opera for entertainment. It seems the country was asleep when somebody put it in for co-hosting Euro 2008. Or, possibly, at a long opera or up in the mountains skiing.

On Saturday the cold coming only warmed slightly. The hotel staff was polite but distracted and obviously nervous about the Croatian supporters — a few middle-aged men and women in Croatia team shirts - sitting at the lobby bar, drinking, laughing and enjoying themselves. As people do on the eve of a big international soccer game. Arriving at the media centre, at a building clearly marked "Accreditation Centre" I got my accreditation but was told, with much tut-tutting that I really should have gone to the other building marked "Accreditation Centre", the one where I'd get my "kit." After a hike, I found it, and my "kit", which turned out to be a knapsack with some promotional stuff from McDonalds and the Austria Post Office — not a free stamp, but a sticker with a soccer ball on it.

Everybody seemed wary. I was asking a man at a stand marked "Info" about the nearest subway stop, when he put up his hands and declared, "Please don't ask me" It turned out there was problem with the connection between his computer and the printer. So he was all busy with that. Or, possibly, thinking about skiing.

Just before Euro2008 began, Austria did, of course, become the focus of international attention. That's when one Josef Fritzl was discovered to have kept his daughter prisoner and fathered seven children by her. As this news arrived not long after a young Austrian woman managed to escape from years of captivity by a man who kidnapped her on the street, Austria came into focus as a disturbingly strange country.

You'd think that a big soccer tournament would be just the tonic - an opportunity to show Austria as benign, healthily preoccupied with the soccer tournament and welcoming. So far, it seems the opportunity is being missed, and very deliberately, too. Underdogs? No, this is the don't-care co-host country

If you ever see a TV report called "Eye on Austria", check it out. But don't expect it to be fun.