1936 On the Continent

express letter-boxes a glaring red. The head Post Office is in the Postgasse. You can telegraph from any post office, and from the hotels you can send telephone telegrams through the porter. The banks are only open for a short time in the afternoon and close their counters at 4 o’clock. Austrian cigars and cigarettes are well known for their quality. You can get them at shops bearing the legend “Tabak Trafik,” where you can also get postage stamps. From the tramways you have to change to the city railway, but omnibus traffic is not included in this arrangement. In Vienna you drive on the left. You must not throw paper about the streets or you will be fined two schillings. On the electric tramway you must only use the entrance at the rear, and must also alight there, unless you are only travelling part of the way, when you use the front entrance only.
II—THE PROVINCES
    Vienna is—to use a word of the post-War period—the “swollen head” of Austria, a much too large head one may say, because of the six million inhabitants of Austria, nearly two million live in Vienna. Of these two million inhabitants of Vienna, each one fancies himself to be one of the rulers of the “Bundesländer,” the provinces. Actually, it is rather the other way round, for the great majority of the leading politicians, professors, civil servants and artists come from these provinces and know from personal experience the extraordinary human qualities of the people of the Alpine countries. You should make a short tour through this little Austria, and get acquainted with the country and the people, for without this “body” that the State carries, you will in reality only have in your mind’s eye the “swollen head” of Vienna, and will take a most incorrect impression of the land of Austria home with you.
Eisenstadt
    Go with me on any day you like in the afternoon, starting at half-past one from Vienna, Schillerplatz (where you get the State auto-bus). In about an hour and a half we shall be in Eisenstadt in the centre of Burgenland, the smallest and most remarkable of the Austrian provinces. Eisenstadt has an excellent hotel, the Weisse Rose, where you can stay, and eat, and if you like also go to the cinema. Drink wine—the town lies in the midst of beautiful vineyards, and is perhaps the very best place in the whole country for you to get guaranteed unadulterated wine; this is because there is much less water there than grape juice, and the vine growers would regret every drop of water they had to put into the wine. The whole town is undermined with cellars, and the fascinating wrought-iron work which hangs from doorways and balconies and decorates so many gratings, bears often enough symbols of the vintage and the cultivation of the vine. In Eisenstadt Joseph Haydn lived and composed, as Kapellmeister to Prince Esterhazy, and here grew up one of the most famous actresses of old Vienna, Fanny Elssler. In the Wolf-Museum there are mementoes of all the Eisenstadt celebrities; the town also possesses the one remainingghetto in Austria. It lies on the Austrian-Hungarian frontier.
    The town of Rust, home of the Ruster wine, is well worth a visit. From Rust you can sail over the Neusiedlersee, and surprise the rarest and most beautiful birds in Europe in their paradise on the mile-long reedy shore of the great lake.
Kärnten
    Kärnten surrounds the Wörthersee, a beautiful, broad, clear, friendly, warm lake, the warmest lake in Austria so it is said. I can only tell you that the Ossiachersee, also a jewel of the Kärntner country, is a serious rival. The Wörthersee is seldom visited by bad weather, and the Kärntner country, which lies where the ridges of the Austrian Alps follow one another eastwards, between Tyrol and the Steiermark forming the frontiers of Italy and Jugoslavia, has found in the Wörthersee, the most vivid expression of her soul. From the first station the great spa, Velden, in the centre of which is the four-towered historic Khevenhüller Castle, which to-day with its pillared terraces has become a fashionable hotel, a glorious view over the lake is opened up. Quite a number of agreeable bathing places are established here, and there are opportunities for carrying on every kind of sport—you can sail, row, ride and play football, climb mountains. You, madam, can dance in the bar of the Schloss Hotel, and take five o’clock tea in bathing pyjamas. You, sir, can drink cocktails with your friends at the