Wien Belvedere

I had my physio appointment this morning. I have tendonopathy and he had me whimpering while he worked on the calf. I have exercises to do. What with them and the knee ones I’ll be hard at it for ages.

The plasterer came today so that’s done now. Next week Chris will do the lights and tiles.

I think Mr C wanted to be sure I’d gone so he offered to drive me to Edinburgh airport. We made good time and he dropped me off at the long stay free for 30 minutes drop off. It was only 5 or 6 minutes walk to the terminal. Just as I got to RyanAir check in Jenny arrived. It’s painless and very quick doing our own bag labels and dropping off. (She booked the flights and booked bags - I could have done with a carry on only). Security was quick too so we went to a nice area for a glass of wine and some hummus, onion jam, flatbread and olives and a good catch up as we’d not seen each other since January.

Ryanair was fine. Very efficient and we landed in Vienna at 9.20.

Everything was going so well till we reached immigration. Jenny went through quickly but I had a stressy time with the Nazi controller. He flipped back and forth in my passport and remarked I’d got lots of stamps. I agreed. He continued flipping. “You exited Rotterdam but have no entry stamp. Find it. You cannot enter Austria without it”. I couldn’t find it. I remembered we’d gone in with Eurostar and the passport was done in London for Belgium then Netherlands. He asked who I’d travelled with and I said my husband. “Where is your husband now?” I replied he was at home. He didn’t like that. Again said I couldn’t enter. I thought he probably neither hated the British or didn’t like my Iranian, Russian and Pakistan visas. I remembered I still had spent tickets in my iPhone wallet so showed him the used tickets to and from Rotterdam. He harrumphed and said it was my responsibility to ensure both entry and exit stamps were in my passport. Phew. Welcome to Austria.

We managed to get the correct train tickets €4.40 each and find the correct train and get out at the correct stop. It was only a few minutes walk to the hotel which we reached at 11.30.