Monday, August 16, 2010

Sétálás--walking around

We like to walk around and look at things. We see lots of flowers in window boxes.


Just down the street are the train tracks. Sopron is 35 miles from Vienna, Austria so Austrian commuter trains circling Vienna pass through Sopron every three to five minutes, blocking the traffic on our road, so it always takes longer than we expect to drive the mile or two to church. Sopron sticks into Austria like a turtle head sticking out of the Hungarian shell. Much of Sopron is only a couple of miles from the border on any side.


There are more cars now but the apartment houses don't have garages. So they've build rows of them near the railroad tracks that people can rent out. They use them just like our garages--with as much junk in them as cars.


There are now more bikes and bike routes. These people are riding the paved path that circles Lake Hetfö on the edge of Sopron (Neusiedler See in German), which lies mostly in Austria.


Here is a view from a window that shows how close Austria is. You have to click on the picture but you can see across the field another village that is in Austria. The border with machine guns and rifles separated the two with armed boats patrolling the south end of the lake ready to kill any swimmer, boater, or biker on the Hungarian side. Now you can bike, hike, fish, and swim freely. You can't even see where the border is--the signs just change language.

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