Marchfeld

Between the Waldviertel and Austria's eastern frontier on the rivers March and Thaya stretches the Weinviertel. North of the Danube, between Vienna and the March, stretches the Marchfeld, the largest plain in Lower Austria, which over the last 2,000 years has seen bitter fighting between Romans and Germanic peoples, long continued frontier warfare with Hungarians and Turks and the battles of the Napoleonic wars. The Marchfeld is now the granary of Austria, and the fertile loess soil, constantly exposed though it is to the danger of degenerating into steppe, produces abundant crops of wheat and sugar beet, with areas of pine forest and moorland here and there. In an area of this kind near Gänserdorf is Austria's only safari park.