Austria is a small landlocked country that sits near the centre of Europe. In pre-modern times, it was once the seat of the Holy Roman Empire and the Austrian-Hungarian Empire. Geographically, the country shares a land border with Germany, Switzerland, Italy, Slovenia, Slovakia, Hungary, and the Czech Republic. Most of the country’s biome is completely dominated by mountains, forests, and foothills of the mighty Alps. The rest of the biome is composed of the flat low country, the western fringes of the Carpathian Mountains and large lakes carved out from the last ice age. The Danube, the second-longest river in all of Europe, also runs through northern Austria, providing an excellent source of freshwater fish. Austria has seven national parks and numerous wildlife reserves scattered across its diverse biomes.
