Pestsäule (Kirchberg am Walde)

Hainburg an der Donau sits where the Danube bends east from the Alps, a stone’s throw from Vienna and a river’s breadth from Bratislava.

The Marchfeld stretches east of Vienna like a wide plain of golden fields and straight roads, where the Danube and March rivers mark the edge of empire and empire’s end.

The Semmering Railway is more than a railway. It is a ribbon of engineering genius that clings to the Alps, a ribbon that earned UNESCO status in 1998 for being Europe’s first normal-gauge mountain railway.