The Austrian German is a dialect, almost like the Bavarian dialect. There are many dialects in Germany, like the Bavarian, the Frankonian and those are even different depending on the area like Upper Frankonia, Middle Frankonia, and Lower Frankonia. Then there are the Hessian dialect, the Swabian dialect, the Saxonian dialect, the Thuringian dialect. Even dialect differ from town to town in the same region.
I have a hard time “getting” what the train announcer says in Munich, no trouble at all in Berlin. But even when in the K-town area, I found myself in a small story listening to two elderly women talking in Pfalisch, the local dialect with the lady behind the counter. They might as well have been speaking Dutch. Americans have no idea how parochial —in the good sense—Germans are, at least out in the villages and among the older Germans. It seems to be the case in other counties as well. Marry a woman from a village fifty miles away and go to live with her there, and twenty years later you are still an outsider in many ways.