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I bought a 520 in May, having before only ridden city bikes and the like.
It has its ups and downs, as a first road bike, I love it, it's responsive, light(ish) and can take a beating.
You probably have downtube shifters on the vintage bike, so you'll love the shimano road bike shifters, the whole system is just so much better.
The tyres are a bit shit, but that's a small thing that you can change easily.
Also, might just be me, but the matte paint job reacts quite a bit with my salty sweat, so the top tube already has marks because of sweat dripping from my face.
As far as the groupset goes, the Sora is nice, although a bit clunkier to what I've imagined, if you can dish out 1000-1200€, try to get the 105 one, loads of people on this site highly recommend the groupset. The Sora on my bike does have a tendency to misalign, so I have to index it every 400-500km or so (don't know if that's often or not).
I really like the 3 front cog system, the 39 one is really handy for cruising, following slowpokes, accelerating and going "up" those mild 3-5% inclinations. If you really like to sprint, you'll sometimes miss the extra 2 or 3 cogs on the 50 one though.
The only realy issue is that the brakes have longer callipers, which means less torque on the tyre, which means less breaking power, it can be a bit scary on wet, tight turns when a car comes around the bend...
All in all it's a great entry level road bike for me and from my research it's probably the best you can get at this price range in terms of a new bike (maybe check Merlin as well though)
Personally though, I'll certainly upgrade to a 105 in a few years, when I'm ready to shill out more than 1000€ for a bike.