Trip to Burgenland

In the second week of July I was privileged enough to be invited along with my housemate to the homeland of my other housemate, who has recently left us to return to that magical land. I have a couple of friends in the area and my housemate had sure spent a lot of time there, so I was curious to check out what made the area so great! The area in question being Burgenland, a reasonably narrow but long strip of a Bundesland which divides the rest of Austria from Hungary and contains Austria's largest lake.

Burgenland is really very close to Vienna, an hour on the train but only maybe 50 km, the train is just quite slow and winds around a lot.We breakfasted at the parents' of another friend, and it was here I was first introduced to one of the coolest things about Burgenland, at least at this time of year: there is food growing EVERYWHERE. I barely had a single fruit or vegetable that had not been grown in the garden or field of the person I was being served it by...

Schloss Esterhazy has some crazy faces on the wall...

Then it was off to examine the main town in the area, Eisenstadt. It is certainly no Vienna in size, but it does have a cool Schloss (Esterhazy) in the middle of it. Having taken the tour and soaked up some grandeur in the Schloss (where Haydn spent a lot of his time as musician in residence), we headed up the hill to one of the oddest churches I have ever visited, a 'Bergkirche'. Basically it contains all the stations of the cross (plus some extra stations they added for extra fun!) inside an artificial, dome shaped rambling building of rough stone. The path winds up, down, in and around and round every corner is another biblical tableaux, until at some point you reach the top and can enjoy the view. Apparently (according to german wikipedia at least) these things weren't so unusual in the 18th century.

The Neusiedlersee and some inhabitants.

Other activities that day included checking out the famous Neusiedlersee, a 36 km long and 6-12 km wide but very shallow (< 2 m) lake surrounded by thick reedbeds and beloved by austrians, holidaymakers and waterbirds alike. In the evening I took my first ever trip to Hungary to eat some Hekk, which appears to be a delicious pike type fish in batter that frankly wasn't too far off a posh british fish and chips! It comes with garlic bread, not chips however.

What Hekk looks like, though mine had no chips!

The following day saw more hanging out by the lake and a trip to the picturesque town of Rust, which is absolutely full of stork nests, perched on little artificial platforms above the chimney. Previous to that occurred the best wildlife sighting of the weekend, when on a visit to a low hill above a large roman quarry (now used for a big opera festival) we were privileged enough to see a Ziesel, or European Ground Squirrel. Not a common thing by any means! The hill by itself was rather cool, it was littered with abstract sculpture left over from a sculptors international conference in the 70s, which gave it a real Salvador Dali air, what with the weird forms intruding on the rolling landscape.

Sculpture park/ Ziesel habitat

We finished off our trip by picking some fresh apricots and courgettes to take back with us. So there you have it, Burgenland, hot, flat, and full of fruit and veg! Oh, and one huge lake and some storks! And lots of people who very much enjoy living there to take advantage of these things...

Have a quick look at the highlights by clicking the green words!

Der Tom