To show you how close many of the newly emerging opportunities were located, let me give you some comparisons: Vienna is no further from Bratislava, the capital of Slovakia, than Stamford 1 is from New York; getting to Budapest, the capital of Hungary, from Vienna is like getting to Albany for you; Prague, the capital of the Czech Republic, is as far as Boston; and Ljubljana, the capital of Slovenia, as far as Washington.
The proximity together with cultural similarities and a shared history gave Austrian banks some advantages on these new markets, and they did not miss their chance. Their strategy for the years after 1989 clearly was: Go east!