The country and its people

Austria is situated in southern Central Europe, covering a part of the eastern Alps and the Danube region; although it is land-locked, it borders on the Mediterranean area. The country has a wide variety of landscape, vegetation and climate and, situated as it is at the heart of a continent, it has always been a junction for communication links between the trade and cultural centres of Europe.
Austria is a federal state with a total area of 32,367 mi2 i.e. 83,830 km2 and consists of
9 provinces - Burgenland, Carinthia, Lower Austria, Salzburg, Styria, Tyrol, Upper Austria, Vienna and Vorarlberg. Austria has common borders with no fewer than 8 other countries. Their inhabitants belong to the major European ethnic groups: the Germanic, Neo-Latin and Slav peoples (the Magyars of Hungary are an exception, deriving from the Ural-Altaic group).
According to latest figures (1994) Austria has a population of about 8,000,000. This represented an increase of some 435,000 since 1981. In 1991 3.75 million (48.2%) of the population were male, 4.04 million (51.8%) female. For those born in 1992 average life expectancy for men was 72.8, for women 79.3.
Austria's population is 98% German-speaking.

The climate

Austria belongs to the Central European transitional climatic zone. In much of Austria the prevailing winds are westerly and northwesterly. In the West of the country temperature variations between day and night and between summer and winter are less pronounced than in the East. Adequate precipitation is registered throughout most of the country, although the amount decreases continuously from West to East.
Austria as a whole can be divided into three climatic regions. The East has a Continental Pannonian climate (mean temperature for September usually above 73°F/23°C, annual rainfall often less than 800 mm). The central Alpine region has the characteristic features of the Alpine climate (high precipitation, short summers and long winters). The remainder of the country belongs to the transitional Central European climatic zone.

The vegetation and fauna

Austria is one of Europe's most heavily wooded countries, with 46% of its total area consisting of forests. In the Alpine foreland, the forests are replaced to a great extent by arable land, especially on the northern edge of the Alps, where from a height of about 2000 ft. there is predominantly grassland. Characteristic of the Pannonian region are scrub, mixed deciduous wood and heathland. To the east of Lake Neusiedl in
the Burgenland one can find typical salt steppe flora.
Austrian wildlife is characteristic of Central Europe: red deer, roe deer, hare, fox, badger, marten, squirrel, pheasant, partridge, etc. Typical Alpine fauna are to be found in the higher mountains: chamois, marmot, Alpine cough and so on. The ibex is also breeding here again. Typical of Pannonian wildlife is the vast bird population of the reed beds that surround Lake Neusiedl, Central Europe's only steppe lake (purple heron, spoon bill, avocet).