Trip Planning
The TakeYourBackpack guidebooks are your all-in-one travel companion, featuring the best cities, national parks, hikes, beaches, and unique sites, along with essential tips on when to go, how to get around, exchanging money, and even local phrases to get you started — everything you need for a smooth, unforgettable backpacking adventure.
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Planning a backpacking route through Austria can be tricky — you need to balance must-see places, travel times, budget, and how long to stay in each destination. Our free personalized Austria itinerary planner creates a route based on your travel style, trip duration, and interests, so you can spend less time researching and more time exploring.
Personal tip: I normally search on good rating for atmosphere (for meeting people) and location (for easy exploring). Cleanliness as a bonus.
Travel Essentials
No vaccinations are required to enter Austria, but you should be up to date on routine shots such as measles-mumps-rubella, tetanus-diphtheria and polio. Austria is a high-risk area for tick-borne encephalitis (FSME), so a TBE vaccination is strongly recommended if you plan to hike, camp or spend time in forests and meadows between spring and autumn. Hepatitis A and B shots are optional extras for longer trips.
vaccination requirementsWhen I first started traveling, I often spent part of my first day in a new country hunting for a local SIM card. While this can still be slightly cheaper, it also takes time and planning.
These days, it's much simpler to install an eSIM before leaving home. Once you arrive in Austria, you can activate it immediately and have mobile data from the moment you land — which is especially useful for ordering transport or navigating away from busy airports.
There are many providers nowadays, and price differences are usually small. I personally go with
Holafly, as it offers excellent network coverage throughout the country and strong global coverage, so you can manage multiple countries from a single app.
HolaFly eSimCulture & Customs
Austrians value punctuality, order and quiet, so arrive on time for tours and bookings, keep your voice down on public transport and in residential streets after 10 pm, and don’t cross at a red pedestrian light, even on an empty street. Sundays and public holidays are rest days: most shops close, and noisy activity is frowned upon. Stay out of marked bike lanes when walking, since cyclists in Vienna and Salzburg ride fast and expect a clear path. In cafés, lingering for hours over one coffee is perfectly acceptable, but in restaurants you need to ask for the bill, as staff won’t bring it unprompted. Saunas and spas are usually mixed and nude, so always sit or lie on a towel and don’t wear a swimsuit inside, though many spas offer women-only sessions. Avoid Nazi-era jokes or gestures entirely, as displaying Nazi symbols is a criminal offense. Women and LGBTQ+ travelers face no specific restrictions, and public displays of affection are fine in cities, if a bit more noticed in rural villages.
Trying traditional food is always a great way to experience the culture. Here are some must-try dishes for Austria.
- Wiener Schnitzel: A thin veal cutlet, breaded and fried until the crust puffs away from the meat, served with lemon and potato salad. By law, only veal can carry the name, so a pork version is listed as “Schnitzel Wiener Art” and costs a few euros less.
- Tafelspitz: Beef boiled slowly in broth and served with apple-horseradish, chive sauce and fried potatoes, often with the broth as a first course. It was a favorite of Emperor Franz Joseph and remains the classic Viennese Sunday lunch.
- Käsespätzle: Small egg-dough noodles layered with melted mountain cheese and topped with crispy fried onions. It is the hearty staple of Tyrol and Vorarlberg and the standard refuel after a hike or a ski day.
- Gulasch: A paprika-rich beef stew brought over from Hungary during the Habsburg era and now thoroughly Austrian, served with bread or dumplings. Vienna’s sausage stands and taverns serve it as cheap, filling comfort food.
- Kaiserschmarrn: A thick, caramelized pancake torn into fluffy pieces, dusted with powdered sugar and served with plum compote. Mountain huts serve it as a full meal, and one pan easily feeds two.
- Apfelstrudel: Paper-thin pastry rolled around spiced apples, raisins and cinnamon, served warm with cream or vanilla sauce. Stretching the dough until you can read through it is a point of pride in Austrian kitchens.
- Sachertorte: A dense chocolate cake with a thin layer of apricot jam under a dark chocolate glaze, eaten with unsweetened whipped cream. It has been Vienna’s signature café cake since the 19th century.
Yes, tap water in Austria is safe and excellent, and locals drink it without a second thought, much of it coming straight from Alpine springs; Vienna’s supply flows in through mountain aqueducts from the Rax and Hochschwab areas. It is fully recommended for tourists, there is no need for bottled or filtered water, and you can refill a bottle at public drinking fountains across cities. Just avoid streams in the mountains unless you treat the water, since grazing cattle can contaminate them.
The main language in Austria is
German. Backpacking is way more rewarding if you know a bit of the local language, so I'd suggest brushing up on the basics just in case your German skills have become a bit rusty.
Want to understand locals better?The complete Travel Guide for Austria includes 52 essential words and phrases — greetings, thank-yous, ordering food, transport, numbers, and common local expressions you'll actually hear.
Get your local basic phrases 👉
Get the Travel Guide - is widely spoken in Austria, and in Vienna, Salzburg, Innsbruck and the ski resorts you can handle hotels, restaurants and ticket counters in English without trouble. Younger Austrians and hostel staff usually speak it fluently, since it is taught from primary school. In rural villages and among older people, English gets patchier, and menus at a country inn may be in German only. German is the language that helps most, and learning “Bitte” (please), “Danke” (thank you) and “Die Rechnung, bitte” (the bill, please) plus keeping Google Translate’s offline German pack and camera mode on your phone will cover almost everything else.
Money & Payments
The local currency of Austria is EUR (€).
Austria uses the euro, and ATMs (called “Bankomat”) are easy to find in every town, at train stations and in most villages. Use machines belonging to Austrian banks, which usually charge no operator fee, and avoid standalone Euronet ATMs in tourist areas that add €3 to 5 plus poor exchange rates. Visa and Mastercard, including contactless payment and mobile wallets, work in supermarkets, train ticket machines and most restaurants, but some traditional taverns, mountain huts, market stalls and small cafés are still cash only, so carry €30 to 50 in notes. Bring euros or withdraw them on arrival rather than carrying US dollars, which are not accepted for payments. When a card terminal or ATM offers to charge you in your home currency, decline and pay in euros to avoid a costly conversion markup. If you need to exchange cash, do it at a bank rather than at airport or tourist-street exchange booths with high margins.
Tipping in Austria is customary but modest: round up the bill or add about 5 to 10 percent in restaurants and cafés, and round up taxi fares to the nearest euro or two. Instead of leaving money on the table, tell the server the total you want to pay when they bring the bill (for example, say “22” on a €20.40 check), or say “Stimmt so” to let them keep the change. Bar staff, hotel porters and tour guides appreciate €1 to 5, but nobody expects US-style percentages.
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Over the years, I've learned the importance of packing minimally. It's so much easier to jump on the back of a truck or squeeze yourself into the last spot of a minibus without that supersized backpack. If you're headed to a warm destination, leave your winter jacket at home; for colder regions, opt for thin thermal underlayers. Instead of packing your entire wardrobe, bring just three sets of clothes, as laundry facilities are available everywhere.
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Hi, I’m Johan (Netherlands 🇳🇱), the creator of TakeYourBackpack. Over the past 3 decades, I’ve backpacked through 90+ countries across six continents, gaining extensive experience with independent travel, long-term trips, and overland routes.