Exploring European history

Today, we cycled another day on the Iron Curtain Trail. We left our campsite and followed a pretty rolling road until we arrived in Hardegg, an Austrian town at river Thaya with an impressive castle. Here, we crossed again to the Czech side and cycled through Podijy National Park. At this part of the trail, we could explore a lot about European history. We saw the former fence between the Sowjet Union and the Western world and climbed a watchtower. It's hard to believe that many people have lost their lives at this border. A little bit later, we passed a bunker that we could even enter. You really don't want to spend much time in this dark whole!
The next section of the trail was pretty adventurous. Lots of forest trails, gravel and sand. I actually think we accidentally happened to ride the mountain bike option of the trail. But we managed without having to push and it was a lot of fun even though it was exhausting.
In Znojmo, we stopped for lunch. However, we had to keep it really short as a thunderstorm was behind us and we wanted to get as far as possible before the rain. So we cycled as fast as possible through a beautiful wine region. In Haugsdorf, we found a shelter at a Billa supermarket and waited for the rain to pass. We then continued to Mailberg where we had a warmshowers host for the night. As we were a little early, we looked for a wine bar (as we are in a wine region) and found an awesome self service place in the middle of the vineyards. The place was a renovated wine cellar where you find a selection of local wines and a price list. You can help yourself with the wines and put money into a box. As we didn't have change, we had to buy 2 bottles 🤷‍♀️
After drinking one and taking the other, we rode to Lisa who welcomed us with a yummy noodle soup in her house.Lue lisää