The trip to the airport was fairly uneventful, except for a slight delay because two an\mbulances had managed to have a slight fender bender at an intersection. The did not seem to have any passengers and no one appeared to be injured. There was though a lot of shouting going on between one ambulance person and the police. Once we cleared that, we continued on and arrived safe and sound , well ahead of our needed time. We found our check-in counter, a different process than we have seen before. Instead of an airline having a specific counter, they are moved around as flights leave and change. You go to a main board where all flights are listed by departure time - our counter was 251- there were over 300 counters.. Check-ins open about 2 1/2 hours before your scheduled departure. Once you arrive, you are checked in, boarding passes are received, baggage is dispatched - unless you have extra baggage and you are on the way to security. If you have excess baggage, then you are sent to the airline ticketing counter, to pay for the extra. Then you make your trip back to the check-in counter, join the queue again with the stubs to verify that you have paid and now receive your boarding passes.
Next comes security. Now, when we went thru, there were not a huge amount of people going through security, but in order for a pile up not to occur, you had to make your way back and forth, up and down a line of of channels. Fifteen times up (30 ft), 15 times down (30 ft) vertically, to travel horizontally a distance of about 100 feet. Security was a swift pass through, most people seemed to know what they had to do, which was easy, because they had a video screen that if you were paying attention, walked you through the steps you needed to take.
Now the gate search occurred. There were 8 major gates and each gate had any number of auxiliary gates off of it. There was signage to indicate how many minutes it was to the major gate area. We were fortunate as our gate was only 3 minutes walk, and the minor gate was only about 2 minutes beyond. Oh, did I tell you that when we checked in we were told that our flight was delayed by an hour. Next it was time to find something to eat, as breakfast was missed and it looked like lunch in Vienna, was bbecoming less of a possibility. The only restaurant in our area was closed, so our option was a coffee bar with the usual sweet pastries. Then we bided our time at our gate, only to see another, later scheduled flight listed. We were told to just keep an eye on the board to see when our flight would be leaving. Closer and closer to the newly scheduled departure time and still nothing. Then over the loudspeaker, a change of gates was announced. As our area only had 10 gates, it wasn't a long trip anywhere. Once there we were notified that there was going to be a further delay. Now we started to get a little anxious, because we had a connecting flight to catch, and if there was much more delay, we would be missing it. We finally left 1hr and 45mins late.
We arrived in Vienna, with 10 minutes to spare, but not to worry, that flight was going to be late leaving!! I had been hoping to get some pictures on the flight, but we were seated over the wings, and there was a lot of big billowy clouds below, blocking almost all of the view. Our arrival in Vienna, was different in that we did not taxi to the airport, but instead parked on the tarmac, where we were met by buses that transported us about a mile away to the terminal building. Once inside, we again had to find our departure gate - again we lucked out as it was very near to where we arrived. Once our plane was ready, we were back on the buses and taken to it. It was the same plane and crew we had arrived with so there had been no need to worry.
Frankfurt airport was much more of a pleasurable transit than our last time. We have not had to pass through any passport control yet on our trip, which is somewhat surprising. We were at our hotel within 45 minutes of landing. Our only glitch was with baggage pick-up, and that was because we were standing at the wrong belt. We saw our flight number on a display board and thought, this was it, how lucky could we be, it was right at the door we arrived through. Well, after waiting and waiting, and everyone else standing at the belt receiving their bags, we figured something was not right. When we investigated further we saw that if we would have read further, we would have seen the number of the belt that our baggage was on. Low and behold, there it was when we got to the right belt.
Again we commandeered a taxi to deliver us to our hotel. We are staying in the general area of the financial district and only about 3 blocks from the train station. The area is very international in scope. Lots of shops and restaurants from India, Turkey, Islam, Chinese, Thai, etc. Almost no shops or restaurants with German foods - a great disappointment to Bill. We ended up finding a great Burger joint to have supper. I discovered my new favourite alcoholic drink - Apelfwein - something like an apple cider, but not cider. That was about it for our exploring for our first day.
We past the Eurotower, the site of the European Central Bank. In the park below it was a protest going on about the austerity programs that almost all countries are dealing with these days. Looks like they have been there for awhile. Here are a couple of pictures.
No comments:
Post a Comment