Vienna sits at the eastern edge of Austria with Slovakia, Hungary and the Czech Republic all within a couple of hours. The rail network is excellent and almost all of the following work without a car.
The Wachau — 1 hour
The best of them. The Wachau is forty kilometres of terraced vineyard along the Danube between Melk and Krems, with a Baroque abbey at one end and Richard the Lionheart’s prison at Dürnstein in the middle.
Do it downstream: train to Melk, abbey in the morning, boat to Krems in the afternoon, train back. Or hire a bicycle — the Danube path is flat, paved and runs the whole valley.
Getting there: ÖBB to Melk from Westbahnhof, about an hour. Boats run April to October.
Bratislava — 1 hour
Another capital, 55 kilometres away, in the euro and in Schengen so there is nothing to change and no border to cross. A compact old town, a castle on the hill, and prices well below Vienna’s.
Getting there: train from Wien Hauptbahnhof, roughly hourly. The EURegio ticket covers the return plus local transport. The Twin City Liner catamaran takes seventy-five minutes in summer.
Baden bei Wien — 30 minutes
A spa town in the Vienna Woods where Beethoven spent fifteen summers and wrote much of the Ninth. Sulphur baths, a Biedermeier town centre, a large rose garden, and a casino. The Badner Bahn, a blue interurban tram, runs there from the Opera in about an hour — slow and charming — or the S-Bahn takes half that.
Mayerling and the Vienna Woods — 1 hour
The hunting lodge where Crown Prince Rudolf, the heir to the empire, and Baroness Mary Vetsera were found dead in January 1889 — a killing and a suicide, though the facts were suppressed at the time and are still argued about. Franz Joseph had the lodge converted into a Carmelite convent, and the altar stands where the bed was.
Nearby is Heiligenkreuz, a Cistercian abbey founded in 1133 and continuously occupied since — the monks still sing the full Gregorian office, and an unlikely 2008 chant recording made them briefly famous.
Getting there: train to Baden then bus, or a car. Awkward without one.
Lake Neusiedl — 1 hour
A vast shallow steppe lake on the Hungarian border, surrounded by reeds, birds and vineyards. Rust is a small Baroque town with storks nesting on the chimneys. Good for cycling, swimming in summer and wine at any time. The lake famously dries up every century or so.
Getting there: train from Wien Hauptbahnhof to Neusiedl am See, about fifty minutes.
Salzburg — 2.5 hours
Long for a day trip but perfectly possible on the Railjet. Leave early, and accept that you will see the old town and the fortress and little else. Better as an overnight.
Practicalities
Book Austrian trains through the ÖBB app, which works in English. Advance Sparschiene fares are much cheaper than walk-up on long routes; local services do not need booking.
The Einfach-Raus-Ticket covers up to five people on regional trains for a flat fare and is excellent value for a group going to Melk, Baden or Neusiedl.
Sunday services are thinner, particularly on rural buses, and small-town museums close on Mondays.
Choosing between them
One spare day and you want the most Austria: the Wachau. One spare day and you want something completely different: Bratislava. Travelling with children: Baden and the Badner Bahn, or the lake in summer. Interested in the Habsburgs rather than the landscape: Mayerling and Heiligenkreuz.
Crossing borders
Slovakia, Hungary and the Czech Republic are all in Schengen, so there is no routine border control — but carry your passport or national ID card, because spot checks do happen on the trains and buses and have become more frequent.
Slovakia and Austria both use the euro. Hungary and the Czech Republic do not — Hungary uses the forint and Czechia the koruna — so a day trip to Sopron or Brno needs either cash in the local currency or a card you are happy using for everything.
Timing
Most Austrian small-town museums and abbeys close on Mondays, and rural bus timetables thin out sharply at weekends. Melk Abbey runs shorter hours in winter and the Wachau boats stop altogether between November and March, which turns that day trip into a train-and-bus exercise.
Sunset matters in autumn: the Wachau is worth seeing in daylight, and in late October the light is gone by six.