Day 8 – The Vienna Airport Experience
…and the answer to that cliffhanger of a question regarding Superbunny is YES!! Superbunny successfully made it home to Bristol and is now at the hospital being fixed, what’s even better is the fact that it’s costing less than £200, much cheaper than anticipated!!
Anyway, where did I leave you previously? Oh yes, we were still in that lovely hotel, the one where trams were screeching outside all night long. Our last day in mainland Europe was pretty chilled for once, we had, once again pre-booked the taxi to take us from the hotel to the epicentre of Austria, Vienna Airport. Now, there is two ways of getting from Bratislava to Wien Flughafen, you can either take the toll road or the scenic route, can you hazard a guess which one our driver took? Yes, even though we paid 179 euros for the taxi, we ended up going for a jolly through the Austrian countryside, it is intriguing, however, the extent to which the landscape changes as you journey from one country into another.
I say that we went for a countryside jolly, we still arrived at the airport a mere 4 hours early. This was the moment of truth for Superbunny, would it survive the airport experience without leaking? Being a major hub for Austria and indeed Europe, you would of thought Vienna deals with electric wheelchairs on a regular basis, apparently not as check in attempted to deny passage for Superbunny. After around 20 minutes being surrounding by a hierarchy of airport staff speaking German, we were asked to wait at the information desk for further instructions. Another 10 minutes passed when the assistance guy arrived and simply said ‘we meet you at gate’ and then walked off, what was the point of that?
Vienna airport is slightly different in the sense that instead of security being front of house, each gate has its own scanners. This works well in theory until your gate enters out onto a flight of stairs! The airports answer to this problem is to take you to another gate full of passengers and prioritise you through subsequently journeying down onto the airfield where the usual chariot awaits to whisk you to the plane door concluding this European trip.
Everything is nearly set already for my return to Europe in June with the destinations being Vilnius in Lithuania and Minsk in Belarus, however, during the planning stage for this, we hit one small obstacle. The majority of flights from the UK to Vilnius are operated by Ryanair who we subsequently discovered won’t accept Superbunny due to its size (being a budget airline, space is at a premium). This has subsequently altered our plans as we have to now depart from London City airport at 9am meaning a hotel is needed for the night before (and this is London we are talking about!)
Oh the joys of flying with an electric wheelchair and stay tuned for the itinerary 🙂
