Networking Basics: How Do VPNs Route Traffic Without A Default Gateway?

I'm trying to better undstand how traffic is routed through a VPN on a windows machine.

I have a working vpn server at work that I am connected to from home. My networks subnet is 192.168.8.x

The vpn server's subnet is 192.168.1.x

If I right click on the established vpn connection and look at the connection details there is no default gateway listed for the network interface. Just an ip address, subnet mask, and DNS.

My understanding is that if you try to access any IP address that is outside your own subnet it then tries to get routed through a default gateway.

I figured with a VPN you simply would have two defaults gateways and your computer would just try both.

I'm obviosly very confused as to how this all works and would like to know how it is that if I type in 192.168.1.1 I get the router on the remoute network (VPN side) while i'm on a 192.168.8.x subnet...