Holiday Articles & Guides to top European destinations
Exploring Austria.
When travelling to Austria, you may expect everything to be terribly serious. The classical music, the Habsburg palaces, the mountains that look like they have been personally dusted by Mozart himself. And sure, you get all of that. But Austria is also the place where you can spend an entire afternoon eating cake in a grand cafe and nobody, not even the waiter in his immaculate tuxedo, will judge you for it. It is a country that understands the art of doing very little, very beautifully, and it sneaks up on you. You arrive thinking about schnitzel and Strauss, and you leave thinking about the exact quality of light on a lake at six in the morning, or the sound of a cowbell in a valley where your phone has given up entirely.
Vienna is the obvious starting point, and it is worth every cliché. The Ringstrasse is absurdly grand, looping around the city like a necklace built by someone with far too much money and excellent taste. Schönbrunn Palace is basically a small city of yellow walls and perfectly trimmed hedges, and you will absolutely take the same photo as everyone else in front of it. The Prater has that weird and wonderful Ferris wheel that turns slowly and creakily and offers a view that makes you feel like you are in a 1940s film noir. But the real magic of Vienna is not in the palaces or the amusement parks. It is in the coffee houses. I am talking about the kind of places where the waiter has been there for thirty years and the newspapers are on actual wooden sticks. You order a melange, which is basically a cappuccino but somehow more important, and you sit. That is the activity. You just sit. The coffee arrives on a silver tray, and the cake is always roughly the size of a small hat. The Sachertorte is denser than you expect, and the Apfelstrudel is flakier than should be physically possible. Accommodation in Vienna is a study in contrasts. You can stay in the opulent, chandelier-heavy grandeur of the Hotel Sacher or the Bristol, places where the carpets are thick enough to swallow your shoes and the concierge has seen everything. Or you can rent a tiny fifth-floor apartment in Neubau or the Naschmarkt area, where the shower is sometimes in the kitchen and the stairs are a health hazard, but the bakery downstairs sells croissants that make you question every other life choice you have ever made. Both options are perfect, depending on whether you want to feel like royalty or like a local who accidentally lives in a very beautiful city.
Then there is Salzburg, which feels like someone took a baroque city and pressed it between two massive green mountains just to show off. The fortress looms above everything, looking thoroughly medieval and slightly smug about it. Mozart was born here, and the city has never let anyone forget it. You can eat Mozartkugeln, visit Mozart's house, and probably get a Mozart-themed haircut if you look hard enough. The Sound of Music tours are still going strong, and yes, they are cheesy, but there is something deeply enjoyable about standing on a hillside pretending Julie Andrews is about to run past you. The old town is a UNESCO site, which basically means the cobblestones are very expensive and very pretty, and the Getreidegasse is full of wrought-iron signs that clang gently in the breeze. Stay in one of the guesthouses just across the river from the centre, the ones with red geraniums pouring out of every window box, and you will wake up to church bells and the smell of fresh bread. In the evenings, the Salzach river turns pink and gold, and the mountains seem to lean in closer, and you realise that some cities do not need to try very hard to be romantic. They just are. And if you need a break from the baroque, the Salzkammergut lake district is right on the doorstep, a quick drive or bus ride into a world of water and silence that feels like a secret even though it is not.
Hallstatt is the village that broke the internet. If you have ever seen a postcard of Austria, it was probably Hallstatt. The little church spire, the pastel houses clinging to the lake, the mountains reflected so perfectly in the water that it looks Photoshopped. The catch, of course, is that everyone else has also seen that postcard. By midday, the tour buses arrive, and the narrow streets become a very polite but definite traffic jam. The trick is to stay overnight. The day-trippers leave around five, and suddenly the village belongs to the lake again. You can hear the water lapping against the wooden boathouses. The salt mine above the town is genuinely fascinating, and the funicular ride up gives you that classic view without having to fight through a crowd of selfie-stick-wielding tourists. The pensions here are simple, often family-run, and breakfast is usually a quiet affair involving eggs from chickens you can probably hear, and jam that someone’s grandmother definitely made. It is touristy, undeniably, but there is a reason places become touristy. Sometimes the beauty really is that ridiculous. There is a gentle, almost guilty pleasure in realising that you are enjoying the exact thing that millions of other people enjoy, and that is perfectly fine. You just need to be there when the crowds are not.
For the remote stuff, you need to head into the mountains. Tyrol is the Austria of your imagination, all cow bells and wooden chalets and meadows that look like they have been combed by a giant with a very neat streak. Innsbruck is the gateway, a surprisingly lively university city wedged into a valley, but the real joy is in the smaller villages. Places like Alpbach, where every building is made of wood and covered in flowers and you start to suspect the entire village is actually a film set. Or head further into the Zillertal or the Ötztal, where the roads get narrower and the air gets thinner and your phone signal becomes a fond memory. Accommodation here is where Austria shines. You can stay on a working farm, in an alpine hut that smells of pine and fresh milk, in places where the owner brings you homemade schnapps in the evening and tells you about the avalanche of 1962 with a kind of cheerful fatalism. The hiking is absurdly well signposted, which is very Austrian, and the silence is the kind that makes you aware of your own heartbeat. At night, if the clouds behave, the stars are so dense and bright that they look fake. You stand outside in your socks, probably slightly cold, and you think about absolutely nothing for several minutes. It is a strange and wonderful feeling, and it is the kind of moment that makes you understand why people who come to the Austrian mountains rarely want to leave. There is a peculiar comfort in realising that the world can get along fine without you checking your email.
Now, Austria does not have a coast in the traditional sense, because it is landlocked, but do not tell that to the lakes. The Salzkammergut region is basically Austria’s answer to the Mediterranean, except the water is freshwater and the mountains are better. Attersee is enormous and clear and surrounded by cliffs and little villages where people have been sailing since before sailing was cool. The water is cold enough to wake you up properly, but on a hot July afternoon, there is nothing better than diving in and floating on your back while the Alps stare down at you. Further east, Lake Neusiedl is a completely different mood. It is shallow and warm and almost surreally flat, surrounded by reeds and vineyards and a kind of light that makes everything look like a painting. The Seewinkel region feels quietly wild, full of birds and wind and the occasional stork. People cycle around the lake, swim, eat fish straight from the water, and generally behave as if they are at the seaside. Accommodation ranges from classic Seehotels with private beach access and slightly too much pine furniture to slightly chaotic campsites where everyone is having a better time than they would at a five-star resort. You can stay in a pension in Rust, one of those wine towns with cobbled streets and a serious commitment to leisure, and spend your days doing very little besides eating, swimming, and occasionally waving at a sailboat. The lake has a tide, sort of, and beaches, and that particular holiday smell of sunscreen and warm water. It is a coast in all the ways that matter.
What stays with you after an Austrian holiday is not necessarily the grandest palace or the most famous view. It is the rhythm of the place. It is the way a city like Vienna can feel both monumental and deeply intimate, and how a remote alpine valley can make you feel like you have accidentally stepped into a simpler, better version of the world. It is the realisation that you do not need an ocean to have a coast, just a lake and a willingness to do nothing with enthusiasm. Austria does not shout. It invites. And by the end of the trip, you are not entirely sure if you discovered the country, or if it simply allowed you to sit down, breathe properly, and call it a holiday.
