Austria, roughly the size of South Carolina, is divided into nine provinces. Separated by mountains in most cases, these nine regions have developed distinct personalities. Because three quarters of the country consists of mountainous areas where few people live, it is a land whose eight million people live mostly in the cities and towns. One-fifth of the total population lives in Vienna, the capital.

Austria shares borders with eight countries: to the west are Switzerland and Liechtenstein; to the north are Germany and the Czech Republic; to the east are Slovakia and Hungary; to the south are Italy and Slovenia. The Alps are located in the western and southern half of the country. Some mountains are actually glaciers and people ski on the glacier slopes as late as mid-June. Austria's highest peak, the Grossglockner (12,457 feet) is located in Hohe Tauern National Park, a wilderness that spreads over three provinces.

As mountainous as Austria is, valleys and alpine passes make domestic travel possible. The Brenner Pass, a gap in the Alps, has a high-speed railroad running through it that links Austria to Italy in the southwest. The beautiful Danube River, running west to east along the northern half of the country, is Europe's superhighway for boat traffic. The Danube begins in the Black Forest in Germany and flows 1,777 miles into the Black Sea, making it Europe's second longest river.

About 35,000 miles of hiking trails wind throughout the Austrian landscape. Hikers don't hesitate to set out on treks that take two days or more. Huge wilderness areas are left undisturbed because the government has set them aside as national parks. Due to careful conservation measures, Austria's wildlife are healthy and their numbers are increasing. The people of Rust have had a special relationship with the storks that come every May from North Africa to return to this little town on the Neusiedler Lake. Nearly every house on Rust's main street has a stork's nest in its chimney. Every year, the huge storks have flown more than a 1,000 miles yet each stork returns to the same house and reclaims the same chimney nest that it had the previous year. Homeowners in Rust recognize their own storks and regard them as old friends. The mother stork lays her eggs, and in September the whole family returns to North Africa. They will all return the next year.