Day 37 – A better Austria, does it exist?

Oct. 13
Big Sky / Montana
Total driving so far 3,372 miles / 5,395 km

http://our Big Sky airbnb-on-google.maps

“Austria is a landlocked country in the southern part of Central Europe, lying in the Eastern Alps“

ref: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Austria.

If wikipedia says so, its very likely the truth, since its quite an authority (disclaimer: the author is a regular wiki donor, and has an indirect affiliation with wikipedia).

But is it really true? It started getting confusing driving around over the last days; road / river / mountains, that is the theme in the Austrian Alps.

Houses that could be located in Austria:

And hiking felt like being at home, with areas that looked like being in the Alps or in lower Austria’s ‘Waldviertel’:

But then you see stuff like this and its abundantly clear that this can’t be Austria, so Karin & Peter, wake up !

Yep, this is Montana, a quite amazing US state.

The scale of the country, and also the commercial development going on in the countryside, is in its own league. Take Big Sky, where we were staying, as example. ‘Lone Peak’ (Lone-Peak-on-visit-BigSky) is towering over Big Sky and its flanks are getting plastered with multi-million $ houses (the ‘expensive’ ones can run up to $40 million). Related fact: Big Sky is not a municipality, there is no elected town or city board, that controls the activities in the place and the surrounding area. It is owned by a single development company, Boyne Resort, and those people call the shots.

That’s how you do business in America, real business, baby.

I was digging up some facts about this beautiful state:

Montana – population of 1.1 million people ; land area of 380,832 km²; 12% of the population is of non-white original, with Native Americans representing with 6% the largest share of that demography.

Meanwhile, Austria…:

Population of 8.92 million people; land area of 82,409 km²; 19% of the population has at least one parent of migrant background.

So to put size and population into relationship to each other:

Austria is 4.6x smaller than Montana (by the way, Montana is the 4th largest state in the US).

Austria has an 8x larger population than Montana.

Austria’s capital is very well know, Vienna, which is not so much true for Helena, Montana’s capital.

Really surprising: Austria’s population is about 3x more diverse than Montana’s. I find that astonishing, Austria being more diverse than a US state.

Is Montana the ‘better’ Austria … no, just very different, but also similar in many of its geographic features.

And, no doubt, really beautiful:

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What’s next … Grand Teton is next !