Overview
Austria travels best on the train, because the east and the west are two different trips. Vienna anchors the east with the Habsburg collections and the coffee houses, and Graz sits south of it as the second city and the Styrian food capital. The middle carries Salzburg, the lakes of the Salzkammergut and the start of the high country. The west runs into Tyrol and Vorarlberg, where the valleys narrow and the season decides everything: ski lifts from December, hiking huts from June.
1 Austria city guide
Fun fact
One number worth knowing
Austria has 13 UNESCO World Heritage sites, and Graz carries two of them: the historic old town, listed in 1999, and Schloss Eggenberg, added as an extension in 2010.