http://www.steyr.info/ might be of some help, but it's only in German ... sorry!

Thanks Alsa, lots of interesting info on that site- I used Google to translate it I shall show it to my son tonight.

Anything to do with BMW?

Steyr is not a big town, it's only about 3 -4 miles across. Driving, or rather navigation, may be a problem as the town is split by two rivers and the centre is quite old. That almost certainly means narrow streets, one way systems and pedestrian areas. And possibly parking problems. It is common in Austria for outlying villages which are part of a council area to use the town name in their address, the first clue is the post code - if it isn't 4400 it will be some distance from town.

It doesn't have an airport. The nearest is at Linz but that's got a very limited service of a couple of Ryanairs to London and a Lufthansa shuttle to Frankfurt plus a few odds and sods. Otherwise it would be Vienna which is quite big and on the wrong side of Vienna for Linz - so if he's driving that means fun on the ring road!

Yes Austria uses the euro and since Steyr is off the tourist trail I would imagine it will be quite good value. English will be spoken by people under say 50, mostly if they need it for their job. So hotel staff will do hotel stuff but may not be able to discuss the inner workings of a common rail diesel engine. Whereas engineers may not know all the words at breakfast.

Hi Steve,

Yes, son does have links with BMW but it's nothing to do with that this time. Not up on the tech stuff of his job but he's a research and development engineer with a car manufacturing firm. He says this conference is in a museum He came home today and said it was all a bit up in the air and he might not be required to go now but nothing's been decided for definite yet.

Thanks for all your info. If it's on for definite I might be on looking for more advice