Weather: 🌤️⛅☁️☁️⛅
Lunch: 🥪🥪🥪🥪🥪 (5 out 5, a sponsored lunch in a cafe in Geras, by a visitor who liked our story ♥️)
Track: 🇦🇹🇦🇹🇦🇹 (3 out of 5, nothing special, lots of roads through farmland)
Hotel: 🛌🛌🛌 (3 out of 5, spacious room with kitchen facilities and bathtub)
Name of followed trail: Grenzlandweg (607)
Special mention: Austria’s friendly people. Clemens the restaurator that we met at our campsite, for helping us replace our hiking pole tips. A stranger at the cafe in Geras for buying us lunch.
The trail wasn’t that interesting, but hospitable Austria has been really good to us today!
When we are packing our bags a van drives up. We meet Clemens, a restaurator that adopted the crucifix on this hill and saw us yesterday. He came to do some restauration work and also to have a chat with us. It was great to
hear someone tell so passionate about his work. We really enjoyed the conversation! Mark at some point asked about his tools, because we need to replace our hiking pole tips. Clemens went to his van and together Mark and Clemens replaced all tips! We’re grateful for that for the rest of our hike I guess!
We hike through the fields to Geras, where we get a drink in a cafe. Before we leave we have a chat with one of the other visitors and he finds the story so interesting that he invites us for a drink and after that also for a lunch at the café. He never even said his name, but we’re grateful none the less. Austria keeps surprising us!
From Geras we have a 20 km walk through the fields to Hardegg. We see the grain harvest starting and tractors with carts filled with golden grain drive on and off to the grain depot.
We walk through Felling, apparently the centre of Austria’s mother of pearl button industry. And they have a museum workshop and big wooden button at each side of the village to emphasize this. They however also have a small farm shop, which we find more interesting. We get a bottle of grape juice, disguised as a wine bottle. It shows that we’re getting close to the Weinviertel, the biggest wine region of Austria.
When we get to Hardegg, a lovely town on the banks of the Thaya river, we’re both tired. Mark is really done today, not feeling completely fit. We’ve had 3 long days and decide we could use a treat. That means no searching for a campspot tonight, but having a bed and a shower instead.
We cook our meal in our appartment that overlooks the river Thaya. Since the river here is the border with the Czech republic, we look out of our window to another country. It’s a special place to spend the night.