Taking advantage of the opening and of the crowd, hundreds of Eastern Germans crossed the border. They finally found themselves in Austria, on the other side of the Iron Curtain.
At that time, thousands of GDR citizens were crowding refugee camps in Hungary. To what extent the Picnic was supposed to serve their getaway, or whether it was a completely spontaneous action, is
still unknown.
When hundreds of people started moving in the direction of Austria, the guards at the border did not shoot. Hungarians were giving information to the Germans on which direction to take.
This way, the first migration wave of Eastern Germans to the West took place, paving the way to the mobilisation of the citizens in the GDR: there was not much time left for the Honecker's regime.