Styria

Graz is Austria's second-largest city and the least internationally known of the three, which is the main reason to go. The Schlossberg, the forested rock at the center of the city with its clock tower and funicular, shapes the urban geography in a way no other Austrian city has.

The Dachstein Skywalk puts you on a glass platform hanging over a 250-meter vertical drop on the edge of the glacier plateau. That is the headline attraction, but Ramsau am Dachstein has built a quieter identity as the cross-country skiing alternative to Schladming's downhill operation just down the valley.

The 2013 Alpine World Ski Championships brought 400,000 spectators to Schladming over two weeks and fundamentally changed what the town believed about its own scale.