In Austria I've never seen anything but steel clad cardboard conduit. The cardboard was asphalted, always ungrounded. Was in use from (probably) early 1900s to 1950ies. Then it was superceded first by rigid plastic ("EVILON") and in the early 1960s PVC flex as it is still used today. Evilon is the most common conduit type for damp area surface mount work.
Still lots of the old conduit around (rewires hardly ever bother to rip out the old conduit if it is still usable), however, it's hard to work with that type of conduit. Exterior diameter is usually 16 mm, so due to the thick wall it's pretty tight, plus the tar paper surface is pretty rough. Good to have some soap handy when pulling wires!
