Everything you need to know about Austria
Follow Austria from Lake Constance through Alpine valleys to the Danube and Vienna. Explore its states and cities, discover the history and everyday life behind the places, then practise German. The lessons teach Standard German, with Austrian vocabulary and regional dialects explained in the reading.
Read it, then make it stick
Geography of Austria
Alpine valleys lead east to the Danube and the plains around Vienna and Lake Neusiedl.
Know the shape of the country
Start with all nine federal states, then place twenty cities and towns and explore eight selected lakes and rivers. Zoom in for Vienna and look for both separate parts of Tyrol. State boundaries, rivers and Lake Constance: Natural Earth, public domain. Other lake outlines: © OpenStreetMap contributors, ODbL 1.0. City coordinates are curated.
Places worth visiting
Essential · Cathedral
St. Stephen’s Cathedral
A patterned tile roof and a soaring south tower define the Vienna skyline. Climb the tower, then see Klimt’s The Kiss at the Belvedere.
Pair the imperial palaces of Vienna with Salzburg’s baroque old town, then go west into the lakes and high Alpine valleys. Essential is our shortlist for a first trip, and worth a detour goes further. Select a pin to read about a place, then play the map and find them all.
Take German with you
Greetings and politeness
Hello, please, thank you, sorry: the ten openers everything else builds on.
Keep going one country deeper
When you have had your fill of Austria, the countries marked guide have a page like this one, and every other has maps of its own.
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