Visiting Austria at any time of year is a great experience, but remember that the season will influence what you can do. Summer  is the obvious time for hiking, mountain biking and lake swimming, but ski conditions also make Austria a fantastic place for winter breaks. Festivals take place year-round, but the majority of music festivals are held between  May  and October.For warm weather, aim for the months between April and October, although these two months can be changeable. Crowds and prices peak in the July and August high season, when temperatures can also climb to uncomfortable levels and many famous institutions close down, including the opera, the Spanish Riding School and the Vienna Boys’ Choir. Consequently,June and September are often the best times for  city trips.You’ll find cities less crowded in winter and (except in ski resorts and over Christmas and Easter) hotel prices lower, although it can get bitingly cold. Winter sports are in full swing from mid-December to late March, with the high season over Christmas and New Year and in February. Alpine resorts are very quiet or close down from late April to mid-June, and in November and  early December.Austria lies within the Central European climatic zone, though the eastern part of the country has a Continental Pannonian climate, with low rainfall, hot summers and mild winters. The Alps have high precipitation, short summers and long winters, and visitors should be prepared for all temperatures there. Seasons are distinct. Summer falls between June and August and has the highest temperatures, but also the highest levels of rainfall. Winter can bite hard, especially in December, January and February. Spring and autumn bring changeable weather, but quite often the most  comfortable temperatures.

Compared  to other European cities,  Vienna is cheaper than London, Paris, Zürich or Rome, similar to Munich, and more expensive than Prague or Budapest. With the exception of ski resorts such as Lech and Kitzbühel, the Austrian countryside is noticeably cheaper than Vienna. Overall, Britons and Americans will probably find things  very affordable.
 Accommodation will be your most expensive item (see  p380  for accommodation costs), but it can be significantly reduced if you use hostels or share in twin rooms and doubles. If you are travelling alone on midrange options, expect to pay about €50 to €60 per night (with breakfast) in a hotel. Prices for a lunch special are around €6 to €9. An evening meal with a glass of
wine or beer costs about €15 to €20, while a day pass on public transport in cities averages about €4.50. Museum entry is €5 to €7 in most cases (though many are cheaper and a few €12 or more); everyday toiletries (buy them in a Drogerie or supermarket, not a pharmacy) as well as splurges, blow-outs and luxuries, plus transportation will also need to be budgeted. We arrived at almost €350 for The Big Trip itinerary ( p26 ) with side trips by public transport but excluding city transport. Taking these into account, about €125 per day  is realistic.If you’re on a tight budget and choose to stay in hostels, eat cheaply, buy your drinks from supermarkets, and walk rather than use public transport in cities, you should be able to manage on about €70 or €80 per day. If you want to go below that budget level, you’ll need to pick and choose the sights you visit carefully. Students and children get discounts for some museums and activities, and family deals  often apply.

The Babenberg  dynasty, however, ran out of heirs in 1246 when one of its rulers, Duke Friedrich II, died in battle with neighbouring Hungarians over a border dispute. This had enormous ramifications for future Austria because it led to the catapulting of another noble family, the Habsburgs, to power in Europe. In a twist of bad fortune, a Bohemian monarch of the day, Ottokar II, married Friedrich’s widow and in 1273 refused to recognise the election to king by prince-electors (see boxed text,  opposite ) of a another noble whose star was rising in Central Europe – the Habsburg Rudolf I  (1218–91).This caused one of the most celebrated clashes in Austrian history when in 1278 the House of Habsburg and Bohemian arch rival Ottokar II (who also controlled Styria and Carinthia) fought it out on the Marchfeld, situated 30km northeast of Vienna. Ottokar, held up while trying to penetrate Drosendorf’s fortress en route to the battle ( p178 ), was killed in battle,  allowing the Habsburg family to reign over the Holy  Roman Empire.
 That was pretty much the way things remained for over 500 years. It’s only a modest simplification to say that between the era in which mammoths roamed the frozen wastes and the next important change – the arrival of 164cm, low-rise Napoleon in the early 19th century – Austria had seen early human settlers (the ones who carved those Venus statuettes), two major civilisations (Illyrians and the Celts), one Roman Empire and two families (the Babenbergs and the Habsburgs) control  the land.

Trying to put a finger on the psyche  of a country that gave us the likes of psychoanalyst Sigmund Freud is surely fraught with dangers. As Freud himself said, ‘I know only one thing for sure. The value judgements of human beings are…an attempt to prop up illusion with argument’. So what was he trying to tell us? Maybe that whatever we decide about Austrians on a visit, some of it will be our  own narrative.
Even Freud, though, couldn’t deny a few things about the Austrians’ mental topography. One is the self-styled conservatism you find in the deeper rifts and valleys of its regions. On top of this come a few historical grains that irritate the Austrian psyche. Once upon a time half the world was its oyster. Now it isn’t. But what Austria now lacks in land it makes up for with agrandiose bureaucracy honed with vigour since the 19th century.
Inside this bureaucracy you are likely to find (apart from the odd grump) a system of dividing up posts not on merit but consensus. Austrians see themselves – probably quite rightly – as more harmony-seekingthan the neighbouring Germans, but they can also be greater sticklers for convention and public opinion is less fragmented, which has much to do with the  country’s size.Austrians are self-made rather than born; strikingly ‘New World’ at times and also fiercely regional. Along with the national symbols, each state has its own anthem, which is sung by schoolchildren on important occasions, and each even has its own  patron saint.
The Viennese are different because they see themselves first and foremost as Austrians. The capital lives and thrives from its Wiener Schmäh (Vienna humour), a concoction of morbid, wry, misanthropic wit, personified by dead rock singer Falco ( p49 ). Some of the local Vienna Actionism art did too. Maybe it’s also why one of Freud’s most important works is his Jokes  and their Relation to the Unconscious. All very serious stuff, of course. But it also happens to be a fine collection  of Schmäh.

Peer into the pantheon of Austrian Olympic Games medallists and one thing becomes clear: Austrians are killer-bee at winter  sports. Football, however, draws the largest crowds, and will no doubt be boosted by the European Championship in 2008. Ice hockey, handball, tennis and motor racing also enjoy a strong following. Except for motor racing, Austrians participate in
these in large  numbers too.Summer is pretty much a time for niche sports like golf (except for snow golf), paragliding, and anything to do with running, swimming and windsurfing. With the arrival of autumn and winter, things get going on  the pistes.

When Soviet  tanks rolled into Austria in 1945, the government nation-alised many of its industries to prevent them from takeover or wholesale dismantling and transportation to Siberia as war reparations. Since the 1990s, Austrians have watched the pendulum swing back and privatisation is bringing the country into line with current trends. Since joining the EU
in 1995, it has also liberalised sectors such as telecommunications, steel  and  energy.
 Women earn about 26% less than men on average (the biggest gap in the EU’s 15 countries), and almost half of a person’s gross wage goes in tax and social security  contributions.
 Although its farms still tend to be of the ‘two cows, three fences type’, it has strong export industries, particularly in chemicals, machine goods, electronics and steel. Most companies are small or medium-sized, however; less than 200 employ more than 1000 people. Tourism accounts for about 10% of GDP, and with 20 million foreign visitors each year, more people per capita visit Austria than any other country. Interestingly, for all this industrial flurry, the landscape has largely been spared the worst and it is not a big polluter – CO2 emissions are below the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) average, and less than half the level per person than in  the USA.

Given the country’s  population distribution, Austria might be expected to
tilt towards neighbouring Slovakia. Its two largest provinces are Vienna and A tiny 1.5% of thepopulation is made up of indigenous minorities, mainly from Eastern Europe. Most settled in Austria’s eastern parts between the 16th and 19th centuries and include Croatians, Slovenes, Hungarians, Czechs, Slovaks and Sinti or Roma. A number of traditional languages have also
crossed the border with them; Slovene is an official language in Carinthia and some town signs much to the chagrin of the populist governor of Carinthia, Jörg Haider – are bilingual. Croatian and Hungarian are spoken  in  Burgenland.The largest immigrant groups are Serbians, Bosnians and Croatians who arrived in the early 1990s, and Turks or descendents of Turks who arrived as guest workers in earlier decades, mainly in the 1950s  and ’60s.As a result, Vienna has some fascinating quarters – such as the 16th district – that are colourful places for a plunge into multicultural life, but immigration has also produced a backlash. Anti-foreigner campaigns have been a feature of Austrian politics since the 1990s, particularly by the right-
wing nationalist Freedom Party, (FPÖ), which played the anti-Turkish card with a slogan ‘Home, not Islam’ during the 2006 national elections, and by Haider, whose Alliance Future Austria (BZÖ), a break-away party from the FPÖ, campaigned on the platform of a one-thirdreduction of the number of foreigners  in Austria.

Restaurants are by far the most common place to eat. Quite often a rural inn will call itself a Gasthof or Gasthaus to denote a more traditional setting and décor. Restaurants usually open from 11am or 11.30am to midnight (kitchen till 10.30pm); some close the kitchen, or even the premises, during downtime from 2.30pm to 5pm  or 6pm.Heurigen are fairly inexpensive places to eat in wine areas and the capital. Food is usually buffet style and consists of hearty, Austrian cuisine, and is available from around 11am to 11pm. Take note that a Kaffeehaus (coffee house) or Café is very different from a Café-Konditorei. A coffee house/café serves coffee, tea and other beverages, as well as light warm and cold meals and sometimes a few pastries and cakes. By contrast, a Café-Konditorei specialises in cakes, often baked on the premises, and will usually serve coffee too. While it is customary to linger for hours, read the newspapers from the racks, drink a wine or beer and play chess or cards in a coffee house/café, this would be out of line in a Café-Konditorei. Hours tend to be different
too. A Café-Konditorei keeps close to standard shop hours, whereas coffee houses and cafés open their doors early, often between 7am and 8am, and close from anything between 7pm and 1am, depending on the market they’re catering to, or even morph into very late-night  drinking dens.In mountainous areas, Hütte or Almhütte (alpine huts) are atmospheric places for basic Austrian cuisine in stunning  surroundings.

Few cities in the world glide so effortlessly between the present and the past like Vienna. Its splendid historical face is easily recognised: grand imperial palaces and bombastic baroque interiors, museums flanking magnificent squares and, above all, the Hofburg – where the
Habsburg rulers lived, loved and married into empires.But this historical aspect often makes us forget that Vienna is also one of Europe’s most dynamic urban spaces. Just a stone’s throw from Hofburg, the MuseumsQuartier houses some of the world’s most provocative contemporary art behind a striking basalt façade. Outside, a courtyard buzzes on summer evenings with throngs of Viennese drinking and chatting. Nearby, restaurants brim with imbibers enjoying the pleasures of wine and food, while across the yard a museum café pulsates with beats.It is a reminder that the city of Mozart, Beethoven, Haydn, Schubert, Strauss, Brahms, Mahler and Schönberg is also the Vienna of Falco, who immortalised its urban textures in song. It’s also a place where sushi and Austro-Asian fusion restaurants stand alongside the traditional Beisl. In this Vienna, it’s okay to mention poetry slam and Stephansdom in one breath.Throw in the mass of green space within the confines of the city limits (almost half the city expanse is given over to parkland), the ‘blue’ Danube cutting a path just to the east of the historical centre and the Wienerwald (Vienna Woods) creating much of Vienna’s western border and you also have a capital with a great outdoors.

 Hohe Tauern National Park  is no place for acrophobes: you’re constantly on a high. This vast
tract of mountainous terrain is Austria’s largest nature reserve, and three is its magic number: almost 300 peaks towering 3000m create enormous ripples in the landscape. The park is carved up between Carinthia, Tyrol and Salzburgerland (which naturally stole the biggest slice of the strudel). The scenery invites applause: waterfalls gouge deep ravines, Pinzgauer cattle graze spongy pastures, vultures wheel in a china-blue sky and glaciers shimmer like diamonds in spiky tiaras. It is amazing.The central vein is the precipitous Grossglockner Road, which twists like a ribbon through a crumpled white sheet at the foot of Grossglockner (3797m), the grandaddy of the Austrian Alps. Down south the Dolomites give you a toothy grin in Lienz, a Roman-rooted city with Italian pizzazz, while stepping west the Krimml Falls begin to thunder when the ice cracks. Further north it’s a different picture, with life spiralling around the lake at Zell am See and Bad Gastein serving up a winning combination of ski and spa. This is where Austria’s wild things are, but it’s no empty wilderness and the resident marmots, chamois and ibex share their playground with active types. The locals have been legging it up these peaks since the Stone Age, so it stands to reason that opportunities for serious hiking are plentiful. If you’d prefer to freewheel over hill and dale, tourist offices hand out maps of the cycling routes that crisscross the reserve. Up for an adventure? Nearly every village offers an array of pursuits for those keen to throw themselves down a cliff, along a river or off a mountain’s edge.

Often given a wide berth by tourists, Burgenland is all but the typical Austria you hear of or read about. It has neither bombastic architecture nor deep lakes and soaring mountains. On the contrary, it is small and sleepy, and in large sections a flat province situated on the border with Hungary. Even the jewel in its crown – Neusiedler See – has dried up and disappeared several times in its natural history – most recently in the mid-19th century. This is the kind of place where everyday life takes precedence, but it is precisely this ‘every-day’ aspect that makes it interesting. The province receives a reputed 300 days of sunshine a year; couple this with a rich soil base and a wine history dating back to pre-Roman times, and you have Austria’s best wine-producing region. What better way to spend an afternoon than sampling local Weine (wines) in a Heuriger (wine tavern) under a warm sun? Throw in the shallow Neusiedler See and a section of it that is now the Neusiedler See-Seewinkel National Park,tack on a bike path that leads into the park and through Hungary before reemerging in Austria, and add a swampy, medieval town such as Rust, and you might find yourself fascinated by Burgenland’s charms.Stork-spotters will be in their element here in summer, when feathered friends populate the roofs of several towns near the lake – including Rust, one of the nicest places to observe them. Although it does have a handful of interesting cultural sights, such as Schloss Esterházy in Eisenstadt, the province’s small capital, Burgenland is more a place where people are content to enjoy good wine and food, and relax in the great outdoors.