Getting in and visas for Austria

WARNING: Mein Kampf and other symbols of Nazism, including material questioning the extent of National Socialist crimes or praising it's actions, are forbidden in Austria, under section 3g of the NS-Prohibition Law. The penalty for any kind of neo-Nazism is a prison sentence of up to ten years, or a fine (the maximum is €21,600). Foreigners are not exempted from this law.

Visa

People from countries within the EU (incl. new EU states), Liechtenstein, Iceland, Norway and Switzerland do not require a Visa for entry into Austria. Nationals of the following countries may enter and remain in Austria without a Visa for up to 3 months - United States, Canada, Israel, Japan, South Korea, Malaysia, Singapore, Australia, New Zealand, Brazil. People from African/Arabian/South-American countries as well as people from the CIS states generally require a visa. Austria is a member of the Schengen Agreement so visas are valid for 24 other countries

By air

There are 5 airports in Austria with scheduled flights. The most important international airport is Vienna which has connection to all major airports of the world. Other international airports include Graz, Innsbruck, Klagenfurt, Linz, and Salzburg which provide domestic flights as well as connections to some European countries. Those airports are particularly popular with cheap airlines such as Ryanair. The most common airports to visit Vorarlberg are Altenrhein (Austrian), Friedrichshafen (Ryanair, Intersky) and Zurich (Swiss)

By bus

EUROLINES [2] has bus schedules from Austria to all major European countries and back. If you make use of special offers and/or book in advance, traveling by plane or train is normally cheaper than by bus, however, the bus may be the cheapest option if you want to travel at short notice or if you have large amounts of luggage.

By car

Austria and all it's neighbouring countries, except Switzerland and Liechtenstein are Schengen members so in theory there are no border controls. However for Euro 2008 these border controls will be reinstated and identity checks are still commonplace. For using highway toll has to be paid ("Vignette"). Costs are approx €70 for one year, €20 for 8 weeks, or about €7 for 10 days. On some Saturdays in July and August expect traffic jams on the motorways between Germany, Austria and Italy when millions of German tourists head south at the beginning of school vacations. A delay of about 2 hours is not unusual. The motorway A10 between Salzburg and Villach is especially notorious. It's best to avoid those Saturdays. From Germany

• Motorway A8 from Munich to Salzburg.
• Motorway A93 from Rosenheim via Kufstein to Innsbruck, Tyrol.
• E43 (A96) from Leutkirch via Wangen to Bregenz, Vorarlberg.
• E56 from Regensburg to Passau, Upper Austria.

From Italy

• Motorway A23 to Villach, Carinthia.
• E54 via Brenner to Innsbruck, Tyrol.

From Slovenia

• E652 to Villach,Carinthia.
• E57 via Spielfeld to Graz, Styria.

By train

Austria's connections with neighboring Germany are excellent, and all other neighbors are connected by at least two trains per day. Check out the so-called Eurocity trains, which are the fastest trains available as well as the trains connecting the bigger Austrian cities called Intercity.

Information for trainspotters

In Austria many railways run electrically. There are many interesting mountain railways of all types. In Austria most electric trains get their power from a single-phase AC network. This network uses its own power lines run with 110 kV. In contrast to normal power lines, these employ a number of conductors that is not divisible by 3 - most power lines for the single phase AC grid of the traction power grid have four conductors.