Following our busy remodeling and upgrade efforts at our condo in Playa del Carmen, it was time to set out for another summer in Europe—our first stop: Vienna. Our trip to Vienna rapidly became an “adventure”, a term we use when things don’t go too well. Wait until you see what we ended up with.
First, A Little Family Time
We visit family in the Bay Area on a regular basis. Frequently, our time there is also jam-packed with everyday life activities, this visit was no exception. Diana spent a fair amount of time clothes shopping because she had lost considerable weight in the prior 8 months.
I was busy getting ready for the travel season as well as periodic financial maintenance. Unfortunately, in the mad rush, I managed to forget to pack my travel router. That means that catching some NFL action prior to our return to the Western Hemisphere may prove difficult. Oh well.
Playing The Long Game
For comfort’s sake, we always travel lie-flat business class for long-haul flights. Since this can be an expensive way to travel, I’m always on the lookout for cheap flights. So, last summer, I booked a roundtrip flight from Dublin to San Francisco for a decent price. The outbound was in October and the return in June. That’s right, an eight-month-long roundtrip. It (should have) saved us a bundle.
One nice feature of this particular booking was the return flight had an overnight stop in Paris before heading to Dublin. At the time, the plan was to check our bags to Paris, collect them, and head to a hotel. Then we would go on to wherever our next destination was. We hadn’t picked our next destination when I originally booked this flight.
Change In Plans
In the meantime, our summer travel plans had firmed up. We decided to start with a week in Vienna and then make our way by train and boat down the Danube to Bucharest, Romania. With our original flight, we would get off in Paris and fly onto Vienna. Not bad.
Unfortunately, due to delays in our remodeling schedule, we had to push out our departure from Mexico and hence our return to Dublin from San Francisco. By the time this was known, there were no overnight layovers in Continental Europe available for our flight to Dublin. Without the overnight layover, it would probably not be possible to check our bags at the connecting airport in Europe as there would have been no reason to do so. Once arriving in Dublin, there wouldn’t be time to fly out of Dublin to Vienna the same day. That meant that we would have to fly to Dublin, spend the night there, and then fly on.
Misplaced Hope Nearly Leads To Disaster
Still, we held on to the hope that we could convince the ground crew at SFO to let us get our bags in Paris. I knew this was highly unlikely, but we figured we could book the flight from Dublin to Vienna as a game-day decision.
We arrived at the airport about three hours early to work on only checking our bags to Paris but to no avail. In addition, we realized that the last-minute coach booking from Dublin to Vienna wasn’t going to be a bargain either. So we began to look at our options for getting to Vienna without overnighting in Dublin.
This option turned out to be very costly, but not enormously so over the flight options from Dublin to Vienna. Then the real problems started.
We started the check-in process before we asked about tagging the bags to Paris. Unbeknownst to us, that caused a check-in automatically on Aer Lingus, our flight from Paris to Dublin. Before we could change our flight at all, we had to call Aer Lingus and get them to release the check-in. It took at least an hour to get them to answer the phone. After they released the check-in, we could go back to United at SFO and get them to rebook us to Vienna via Amsterdam. Imagine, sitting at the airport on hold with the airlines as time is ticking away and the airline agents were no help, they couldn’t get Aer Lingus to answer the phone either.
Bag Drag, an Understatement
By the time Aer Lingus did their thing and we returned to the counter to rebook our United flight, it was nearing one hour before the flight to Amsterdam was scheduled to leave. Then after rebooking the flight, the agent tried to print out our bag tags, but we had gone a few minutes past the 60-minute window for bag check-in but. The system wouldn’t let the agents print the bag tags. If the bags couldn’t get on the plane, neither could we. Oy vey.
The agents tried for 30 minutes to get the tags printed. They tried repeatedly to override the system, but nothing worked. Then they suggested taking our big bag through TSA, even though it wouldn’t even fit through the scanner. We said it was not possible since the bag contained a summer’s worth essential itmes TSA would not permit through: personal care products, a Leatherman tool, and our beloved kitchen knife. All of this while we are watching the clock and missing the very expensive flight is getting more and more likely. Needless to say, we were both sweating. Even though we travel a lot, the airport process can make us nervous.
At Diana’s suggestion, we convinced them to write a manual bag tag and send the bag on the next flight. We aren’t sure why we had to suggest a manual tag to the agents but they were all standing around looking like they didn’t have a clue. We had originally planned to check our roll-aboard bags as well as our one larger bag, but I knew the odds of our bags making the flight were quite low, so we chose to keep them with us.
Mad Dash to the Plane
The clock had kept running during the baggage negotiation, so by the time our bag had a manual bag tag, we had about 30 minutes to make the flight. We had to get through TSA and go to the very last gate in the SFO International Terminal G. We barely made it and Diana took a fall getting into the security line. She was OK, save a few bruises, but things happen when we have to rush. It took quite a while once we were on the plane for us to calm down and stop sweating, but at least we were on our way.
No Bag For You
Unfortunately and unsurprisingly, our bag didn’t join us in Vienna. After the Baggage Meltdown of ’22, we placed AirTags in all of our luggage. We could see right away that our bag was still sitting at SFO. Per the standard practice, we filed a lost bag claim with the final carrier, Austrian Airlines, in Vienna. The Austrian agent was quite helpful in getting our claim form filled out and instructing us on how to follow up. She even gave us tips on how to purchase any needed clothes and personal items if the bag was delayed for more than a day. We didn’t need to do any of this since the things we needed near term were in our roll-aboard bags we had smartly decided to carry on with us. Not checking those bags was a great call.
Over the next few days, we received frequent updates from Austrian about the status of our bag. At one point, Diana got an email that said they found the bag and it was in transit to us. But the AirTag told a different story. The bag was still moving around various terminals at SFO, nothing else. Diana checked the bag’s location every day because we knew we were only in Vienna for seven nights. Four days later, after a very direct email to Austrian Airlines, we received another email saying the bag was in transit. The Airtag happily showed the bag was no longer at SFO. On the fifth day, the bag was delivered to our hotel in Vienna and luckily, we were still there.
All She Wrote
We were so happy to see our bag that at first, we didn’t notice the amount of damage. The bag had a number of new cracks but there was a critical one right by one of the wheels, the bag was finished. We purchased this bag five years ago just before launching our nomadic life. It had been everywhere with us, but the toll of the road had finally caught up and done it in. So, Diana filed a claim with Austrian Airlines to get it replaced. They probably had little to do with its demise, because we think moving the bag from terminal to terminal at SFO for three-plus days did the trick. But Austrian Airlines was simply the one left holding the bag, so to speak.
Then came the back and forth over email with the third-party vendor responsible for replacing the bag. Their responses were slow and at this point, we were on a cruise and had nowhere to receive the new bag. We were pretty sure that our poor damaged bag wasn’t going to make it for the duration of our trip over all of the cobblestones in Europe. So, after much consternation, we figured out where to send the new bag so we would get it. In addition, we were somewhat limited in our choice of replacements, so we focused on getting a bag with similar functionality to our old one. Our new bag is a lot like our old one, with one cosmetic exception. See if you can spot it.
Staying at the Imperial Riding School
Now on to a little about our arrival in Vienna. The Hapsburg dynasty, which ruled the Austro-Hungarian Empire, from Vienna was big into horses. Many people are familiar with the world-famous Lipizzaner stallions and their fabulous show. We did get to see their show, which I will report on later.
The reason I mention it is that we wound up staying in the Imperial Riding School Hotel. At first, we thought the hotel might be related to the Lipizzaner show, but no. The building was the former site of another riding school. The beautifully remodeled hotel is a relatively new Marriott-affiliated property. Our Marriott status got us a nice breakfast and it was easy to get around town since there were close to several major tram lines. There are some nice equestrian-themed aspects to the hotel as well. I recommend it in case you are contemplating a visit to Vienna. We stay in lots of hotels and this was one of the nicest.
Most Livable City
So far, I’ve gone on so long about our challenges with getting to Vienna, I haven’t really had time to tell you about the city itself. Frankly, there is so much more to say that most of it will have to wait for the next post. But, I will talk now about something I found surprising: Vienna is considered to be “the most livable city” in the world.
Cheap social housing is the key to their title. Renters in Vienna pay a third of what you would pay for comparable accommodations in London or Paris. Nearly half of the population is housed in apartments owned or subsidized by the city. A resident can rent a small, clean, two-bedroom flat within walking distance of many amenities for $700/mo with no deposit. And once in the system, the renter can stay forever and even pass rental rights to his/her children.
The program started in the wake of World War I as an attempt to house the large number of people uprooted by the collapse of the Hapsburg empire. It’s immensely popular and accounts for resident satisfaction. The Viennese seemed quite proud of their livability title, naturally.
What baggage challenges have you had?
