AKIPRESS.COM - Hungarian police stood by as thousands of migrants hopped cross-border trains Sunday into Austria, taking advantage of Hungary's surprise decision to stop screening international train travelers for travel visas, a get-tough measure that the country had launched only days before to block their path to asylum in Western Europe.

Fourteen trains from Hungary's capital of Budapest arrived at the Hegyeshalom station near the Austrian border, disgorging migrants onto the platform, reports The Associated Press. 

Police didn't check documents as passengers, mostly migrants, walked a few yards (meters) to waiting Austria-bound trains, which typically left less than 3 minutes later. Austrian police said more than 13,000 migrants have passed through their country to Germany over the past two days, far more than expected.

Arabs, Asians and Africans who often have spent weeks traveling through Turkey, Greece and the Balkans to reach Hungary, a popular back door into the European Union, found to their surprise they were permitted Sunday to buy tickets to take them all the way into Austria and Germany. Hungary had insisted last week they would no longer be allowed to do this.

Ticket sellers at Budapest's Keleti station merely rolled their eyes when asked by AP why they were selling Vienna tickets to asylum seekers. Several migrants told the AP they had expected to be rejected, but easily bought international tickets to Vienna without visa checks.

"No check, no problem," said Reza Wafai, a 19-year-old from Bamiyan, Afghanistan, who hopes to join relatives in Dortmund, Germany. He displayed his just-purchased ticket to Vienna costing 9,135 forints ($32.50). He was traveling without a passport, carrying only a black-and-white Hungarian asylum seeker ID.

EU rules stipulate asylum seekers should seek refuge in their initial EU entry point. But virtually none of the migrants want to claim asylum in Hungary, where the government is building border defenses and trying to make it increasingly hard for asylum seekers to enter.

Hungarian government spokesman Zoltan Kovacs told The Associated Press that Hungary had decided to drop visa checks on train ticket customers, a measure introduced only Tuesday, because of the sudden drop in migrant numbers made possible by Germany and Austria's breakthrough decision to take thousands of asylum seekers stuck in Hungary. The country used 104 buses to clear Budapest's central Keleti train station and Hungary's major motorway of more than 4,000 migrants and deliver them to the border.