One of the things I find fascinating about living in Austria is just how many neighbors the tiny Alpine country has.
Especially as, originally coming from the UK where we only had one — Ireland – (ocean on all sides, one land border on the island of Ireland between Northern Ireland and Ireland), and then moving to the United States where we only had two (Canada and Mexico), for a teeny tiny country Austria has a heckuva lot more.
So, how many countries border Austria, and why are there so many?
Austria has the same number of neighbors as France, Serbia, Tanzania, Turkey and Zambia
In all my decades on the planet, I had never lived in a landlocked country until I moved to Austria.
Being landlocked, of course, means Austria does not have access to the open ocean.
It is also one of the reasons why Austria has so many neighbors as, unlike many other countries, it doesn’t border on any ocean.
To answer the main question, though, there are eight countries that border Austria on its 2,562 kilometres of land borders.
Those countries are:
- Germany
- Hungary
- Italy
- Liechtenstein
- Slovakia
- Slovenia
- Switzerland
- The Czech Republic
Austria’s longest land border, though, is with Germany with a border stretching for 784 kilometers.
As if that wasn’t a huge number of countries to be neighboring, you might also be interested to know only six other countries have eight neighbors like Austria — France, Serbia, Tanzania, Turkey and Zambia.
And now you know.