Burgenland could well be taken as a sign of the Soviet Union towards opening the borders to the Western countries, starting in the late 1970s. Despite Burgenland (especially the area around Neusiedler See) always producing excellent wine, some vintners in Burgenland added illegal substances to their wine in the mid-1980s. When this was revealed, Austria's wine exports dwindled dramatically. After recovering from the scandal, vintners in Austria, not only in Burgenland, started focusing on quality and mostly stopped producing poor quality wine. On 27 July 1989, the Foreign ministers of Austria and Hungary, Alois Mock and Gyula Horn, cut the Iron
Vorarlberg Rhine Valley areas of Bregenz and Dornbirn, live about 180,000 people, around half the population of Vorarlberg. The "green lung" of this region is the Vorarlberg Ried, which is on the border with Switzerland and is surrounded by the settlements of Vorarlberg on three sides. Geographically the Lower Rhine Valley also includes the municipality of Altach. Due to its historical links with the municipality of Götzis and membership of the district of Feldkirch, Altach is often considered part of the Oberland. Vorarlberg Rhine Valley The Vorarlberg Rhine Valley (), also called the Vorarlberg Oberland and Unterland, is a section of the Alpine