A Detour into Hungary

We left our accommodation in Vienna and headed south west towards Hungary, discovering the Iron Curtain Route. We travelled through flat farmland on bumpy country roads that need some major resealing, and stopped for the night at a place called Buk. Apparently, Buk is renoun for its healing mineral waters and has an area outside the town called Bukfurdo, a health and wellness complex that has over 30 medicinal pools. It is a summer resort town but when we arrived, the summer's day felt more like midwinter with consistent rain and wild winds with a wind chill factor that felt like zero degree temperatures. So much for the swimming!

The Hotel Gabriel in Vienna - good location and great rooms.

The Hungarian border with the border gates in the distance that are not used.

Our accommodation in Buk is a villa that looks across farmland to the Bukfurdo area on the other side of town.

A wet day, so not a lot of photos taken and most of the time at Buk was spent indoors.

Outside of the villa.  Its design had lots of character as did others in this tourist town. 

Many Hungarian village houses are very spartan with a concrete box and pitched roof as the basic design. They have a door in the middle and a window on either side. Many of the village houses have no front yards with their front doors opening directly onto the footpath or narrow road. The drab colour of the houses and the austere streetscape with little plant life looks a bit like what life might have been like behind the iron curtain. Street lights were held up by two rusty iron poles leaning against each other by fixed at the top. It is certainly a different landscape to German Bavaria.

Crossing the border back into Austria the next day wasn't as easy as leaving it the day before. We passed by the derelict Hungarian border gates further south only to be met with a border check by Austrian Police on the other side.