We began our tour at a spa resort in Rust on the Neusiedler See in Eastern Austria. Rust is home to many waterfowl including a large colony of storks.

On our first day of riding we rode to Sopron via the Fertorakos stone quarry. This quarry has been used since Roman times to provide building materials for the area.

The Sopron-Fertorakos area was the site of the Pan-European Conference in 1989 at which the first leak in the Iron Curtain developed. This leak quickly developed into a torrent of East Germans and other captive peoples who fled across this open border crossing into a welcoming Austria. A monument at the Fertorakos quarry commeroates this exodus. It was crafted by Gabriele von Habsburg, a descendant of the Hapsburg rulers of the Austro-Hungarian Empire.

Sopron is a major city in the west of Hungary. It dates from the Roman frontier when Sopron was an outpost on the "Amber Road" that supported trading with the Baltic region. It prides itself on having voted in 1921, at the dissolution of the Austro-Hungarian Empire, to become part of Hungary in spite of its geographic position in a salient that extends well into eastern Austria.