Justin Pickard
July 29th, 2004, 11:58 AM
Extract from ‘The Lonesome Planet Guide to the Former Austro-Hungarian Empire’ by Karla Burgen and Boris Petrovik (2001)
CONTENTS
How to use this guide 2
Contents 4
Introduction 5-6
AUSTRO-HUNGARY’S PAST 7-15
Empire
Military
Railways
Art and Architecture
AUSTRO-HUNGARY’S PRESENT 16-21
Science and Technology
Learning and Education
Politics
AREA GUIDE 22-218
SURVIVAL GUIDE 219-240
Getting there from Great Britain
Getting there from Greater Germany
Getting there from North America
Visas, Passports, Bribes and Red Tape
Life, Health and Travel Insurance
Costs, Money and Banks
Health
Information
Getting around
Accommodation
Eating and drinking
Post, Phones and Semaphore
Opening Hours, Shops and Monuments
Festivals and Public Holidays
Sports and Outdoor Pursuits
Military Police, Trouble and Harassment
ACCOMODATION AND FOOD 241-258
* * * * *
INTRODUCTION
It is difficult for today’s visitor to Austro-Hungary to believe that over a hundred years ago this country stretched from Switzerland to Russia and from Germany to Greece. Indeed, for almost fifty years it was the largest country in Europe - but alas, no longer for what used to be Austro-Hungary are now the nations of Bohemia, Moravia, Bulgaria, Yugoslavia and Czechoslovakia, among many others. Despite Austro-Hungary’s fall from world power status over the last hundred years, it still is a major player in European politics and has much to offer the foreign traveller.
Austria-Hungary was established by a compromise between the Hungarian nobility and the Habsburg monarchy in an attempt to maintain the old Austrian Empire. It was a multi-national Empire, and its political life was dominated by disputes between the eleven principal national groups, in an era of national awakening. Although quarrelling between the groups frequently upset the Empire, the hundred and thirty seven years of its existence has seen ethnic integration and separation in equal measure, rapid economic growth and modernisation, as well as many liberal reforms.
Travel in Austro-Hungary couldn’t be more popular at the current time. The country’s rugged scenery, cultures and peoples, and extreme contrasts of the old and the new affect everyone who visits, and with the ‘Empress’ Anna Rosenbaum sanctioning freer elections and freer speech in recent years, the use of violence against foreigners is far less frequent than it has been. The economy is booming, and when compared to its neighbours the financial situation here is positively luminescent.
The capital and seat of government, Vienna, has never forgotten it was once the capital of a large and influential empire. Its residents act as if it still were - the small doses of courtliness, the extremely polite forms of address long forgotten in other German-speaking countries, the formal mode of dress. Vienna, as with much of Austro-Hungary as a nation, is a city both modern and extremely old-fashioned all at once. Other large cities include Budapest, the nation’s second city, Kijev to the East, the Industrial centre of Krakow, Kolozsvár, and Lemberg, world-renowned seat of culture and learning.
CONTENTS
How to use this guide 2
Contents 4
Introduction 5-6
AUSTRO-HUNGARY’S PAST 7-15
Empire
Military
Railways
Art and Architecture
AUSTRO-HUNGARY’S PRESENT 16-21
Science and Technology
Learning and Education
Politics
AREA GUIDE 22-218
SURVIVAL GUIDE 219-240
Getting there from Great Britain
Getting there from Greater Germany
Getting there from North America
Visas, Passports, Bribes and Red Tape
Life, Health and Travel Insurance
Costs, Money and Banks
Health
Information
Getting around
Accommodation
Eating and drinking
Post, Phones and Semaphore
Opening Hours, Shops and Monuments
Festivals and Public Holidays
Sports and Outdoor Pursuits
Military Police, Trouble and Harassment
ACCOMODATION AND FOOD 241-258
* * * * *
INTRODUCTION
It is difficult for today’s visitor to Austro-Hungary to believe that over a hundred years ago this country stretched from Switzerland to Russia and from Germany to Greece. Indeed, for almost fifty years it was the largest country in Europe - but alas, no longer for what used to be Austro-Hungary are now the nations of Bohemia, Moravia, Bulgaria, Yugoslavia and Czechoslovakia, among many others. Despite Austro-Hungary’s fall from world power status over the last hundred years, it still is a major player in European politics and has much to offer the foreign traveller.
Austria-Hungary was established by a compromise between the Hungarian nobility and the Habsburg monarchy in an attempt to maintain the old Austrian Empire. It was a multi-national Empire, and its political life was dominated by disputes between the eleven principal national groups, in an era of national awakening. Although quarrelling between the groups frequently upset the Empire, the hundred and thirty seven years of its existence has seen ethnic integration and separation in equal measure, rapid economic growth and modernisation, as well as many liberal reforms.
Travel in Austro-Hungary couldn’t be more popular at the current time. The country’s rugged scenery, cultures and peoples, and extreme contrasts of the old and the new affect everyone who visits, and with the ‘Empress’ Anna Rosenbaum sanctioning freer elections and freer speech in recent years, the use of violence against foreigners is far less frequent than it has been. The economy is booming, and when compared to its neighbours the financial situation here is positively luminescent.
The capital and seat of government, Vienna, has never forgotten it was once the capital of a large and influential empire. Its residents act as if it still were - the small doses of courtliness, the extremely polite forms of address long forgotten in other German-speaking countries, the formal mode of dress. Vienna, as with much of Austro-Hungary as a nation, is a city both modern and extremely old-fashioned all at once. Other large cities include Budapest, the nation’s second city, Kijev to the East, the Industrial centre of Krakow, Kolozsvár, and Lemberg, world-renowned seat of culture and learning.