Austria Discovery Guide

Austria offers two entirely different holidays in one small country. One is urban and imperial: Vienna, with the Habsburg palaces, a concentration of European painting and music that few cities match, and coffee houses where one cup buys the table for the afternoon. The other is alpine, and begins about an hour away.

The mountains take up about sixty per cent of the country. Salzburg sits at the edge of them with a fortress above and Mozart’s birthplace below; Innsbruck has a ski jump and a glacier within the city’s reach; and the lake district of the Salzkammergut, with Hallstatt on its water, is the postcard.

What makes it work practically is the transport. Trains and buses reach almost every valley on an integrated timetable, so a trip can move between Baroque cities and three-thousand-metre peaks without a car and without stress.

If you have a week

Three nights in Vienna, two in Salzburg, and two in the Salzkammergut lakes or in Tyrol. The trains between them are fast and scenic and the whole thing works without a car.

If you came for music

The Musikverein and the Konzerthaus in Vienna, the Staatsoper — where standing tickets cost a few euros and go on sale shortly before the curtain — and the Salzburg Festival in July and August, which books out a year ahead.

If you want mountains

Tyrol and Vorarlberg for the highest and most dramatic country, with the Großglockner high alpine road crossing at 2,504 metres. The Zillertal, the Ötztal and the Stubai have glaciers; Carinthia in the south is warmer and has lakes worth swimming in.

If you want the quieter Austria

Styria for wine, pumpkin-seed oil and the hills around Graz; Burgenland for Lake Neusiedl, a shallow steppe lake shared with Hungary; and the Wachau, a UNESCO-listed stretch of the Danube with terraced vineyards, abbeys and a cycle path along both banks.

Austria is a small republic with the institutional habits of a large empire, and the gap between the two is where a good deal of its character sits.

Formality

Titles are used and matter — Herr Doktor, Frau Magister — and greetings are formal, with Grüß Gott the standard in most of the country. The distinction between the formal Sie and familiar du is observed carefully.

The coffee house

Listed by UNESCO as a cultural practice rather than a business model. One cup buys the table and the newspapers for as long as you want them, and being hurried is a sign that something has gone wrong. The waiter’s slight brusqueness is part of the form.

Vienna and the provinces

Vienna holds a fifth of the population and is regarded by the rest of the country with a mixture of pride and suspicion. Tyrol and Vorarlberg in particular have strong separate identities, distinct dialects and an alpine self-image that owes little to the capital.

The reckoning

The national story that Austria was Hitler’s first victim rather than a participant held until the 1980s and was publicly dismantled after the Waldheim affair. The reckoning with that period is recent and is still under way.

• Vienna

Hallstatt is the clearest case of a place overwhelmed: a village of under eight hundred people receiving up to a million visitors a year, most of them for an hour. The village has installed barriers at the most photographed spot and asked for fewer coaches. Going early or late in the day, staying a night, or choosing Gosau or Obertraun nearby all help.

Take the train. Austria’s railways are almost entirely electrified and largely hydro-powered, and the Klimaticket gives unlimited travel on nearly everything. It is cheaper and less stressful than driving, and mountain valleys have limited parking by design.

In the Alps, stay on marked paths — the meadows are farmed and are next winter’s hay. Close gates, keep dogs leashed near cattle, and give cows with calves a wide berth.

Alpine huts run by the Austrian and German alpine clubs are a better and cheaper way to spend a night high up than any valley hotel, and membership supports the trail network directly.

May, June and September are the best months for the mountains and the cities alike: mild, clear, flowers in June, and the high passes open without the August crowds.

July and August are the summer peak, warm in the valleys and hot in Vienna, with every lake and mountain railway busy. It is also when Salzburg’s festival fills the city and its hotel prices.

December to March is the ski season, reliable above about fifteen hundred metres, with Christmas and February half-term the most expensive weeks of the year. Vienna’s Christmas markets run through December and the ball season fills January and February.

April and November are the in-between months. Mountain lifts, hotels and restaurants close, high passes are shut and the weather is unsettled — but the cities are cheap and quiet.

What a day costs, by how you travel

Relative cost across the country

Austria is expensive but less so than Switzerland next door. The lunchtime Mittagsmenü, offered by most restaurants on weekdays, is the single best value available.