The Danube Island Festival, reputedly Europe´s largest open air music festival, takes places the weekend of our arrival in Vienna and is within walking distance or a short streetcar ride from our apartment. There are 27 areas set up with continous concerts of popular music for three days, with attendance of between 2 and 3 million people. And it´s all free! The first night for us, Saturday, we see a tribute concert to Georg Danzer, on the main stage. He is Austria´s favourite son, in terms of writing popular songs in the language spoken by Austrians (as opposed to standard or northern German). He, a smoker, was scheduled to give this concert as of two weeks ago, but was replaced by a friend because of his deteriorating lung cancer. He died two days ago and ... read more

The following day is quiet and peaceful in the morning. We set out on the same route. As we left Mattersdorf again, the same two older men who had been sitting on a bench by the side of the road at the edge of Mattersdorf just before the field where we took the video of the approaching storm, were there again. We had a lengthy conversation which started the day on a pleasant note. We do not make our day´s mileage plan because of a constant noise in Ray´s bike. It sounds like something rubbing on the front wheel fender. We stop three times, first to clean the wheel, fender - then to take off the front fender - then thirdly we take off the rear fender and find the problem to be a leaf stuck ... read more

We decide this morning that we will skip Middle Burgenland - it is a region so hilly that it has no train service. We cycle in a pleasant warm morning through the valley to Oberwart, stopping in Grosspetersdorf. This is an ethnic Hungarian area of Burgenland. Oberwart is the last stop on the train line into Southern Burgenland which reaches the read from the neighboring province to the west. Thus to get to Northern Burgenland you have to detour around Middle Burgenland. We had however another detour that day as they were doing track work north of Oberwart. We thus had to cycle further north along this line in order to reach the first station, Pinkafeld, served by rail. (the buses the rail company provided in place of the rail service would not take bicycles). ... read more

This entry is marked as Hungary - since there is no entry on travelblog.org for´Das Burgenland', the current easternmost province of Austria - which stayed with Hungary after the countries split at the end of WW1 until the province, formerly Western Hungary, was joined to the new Austrian republic. That is all of the province except for its capital, Sopron (Odensburg in German), which voted to stay in Hungary. Thus the province was without a capital city. The second largest town, changed its name at the time from Mattersdorf or Mattersvillage to Mattersburg or Matterscastle, in order to give it more cachet as a possible capital city but the title went to the contender Eisenstadt which already was called Stadt or City. Both of the towns are still quite small. The province was quite poor ... read more

Take the train to Deutschlandsberg in the Southwestern part of Styria on Sunday. There is the opening of the regional wine festival taking place in the Castle (on top of a steep hill). The event is quite fun - the castle exhibits are open, free wine and food samples from the region, a lederhosen band, beautiful sunshine - and magnificient views of the Sulmtal (valley) which is described as the Tuscany of Styria. After the opening of the festival - the speeches go on about Styria´s two trademark food products - Schilcher (a rose wine) and Kernoel (pumpkin seed oil) - the latter is present in great quantity on all salads in the region and for sale at many farms in the region (there is obviously an oversupply) - we continue on our bicycles (without ... read more