Vienna 2025: Settling In

- July 24, 2025

It's been over a week now since we arrived, and it's been rather a busy time so far.

Amsterdam Airport - a long wait, again

Arrival & Place

Flying out of Bristol again - because going to Heathrow is such a drag - we had to change in Amsterdam as there are no direct flights to Vienna. Having been stuck there twice before after missing connecting flights, once even overnight (and let me tell you, trying to sleep in an airport with two kids is not fun), I deliberately chose a fairly long connection time. KLM will offer a window as small as 50 minutes, but this time I went with about 90 minutes between arrival and departure. Keeping in mind that there's border control at Amsterdam thanks to Brexit, I thought that was where the pinch point might be.

Well, it wasn't that - it was the long delay getting out of Bristol this time, which caused us to miss our flight again. That's three out of the four times we've gone through Amsterdam... so although annoyed, I was fairly relaxed as I already knew what to do. Sorted our changed connection and then we had several hours to wait, which meant we'd arrive at our Vienna flat around midnight. Like we did last year. Let's just say, next time it's definitely Heathrow!

This year, our accommodation is not an Airbnb but a private home. This has been such provision after much upheaval and prayer - initially, the plan had been to stay at my aunt's place in Vienna, which she offered us last summer. That would have been a free stay, which would of course have been welcome. But in March, she texted me saying we now couldn't stay there because there were renovations at her other flat so she needed the Vienna one herself. That was fairly late in the day, given that we needed six weeks of continuous accommodation and if even one weekend of those six weeks is taken, we obviously can't book that place. So there was already a dearth of options, but I did find something viable on Airbnb that looked great - until that person messaged me at Easter, asking me to cancel it because she'd had a family emergency.

Now we were really stuck. Places on Airbnb were by now rare, expensive, and horrible... there was literally nothing I felt we could book. I went all over the Internet, VRBO, booking.com, local pages for short lets... nothing. In the end I was desperate enough to look at Facebook, a few 'short lets' groups which were clearly filled with scammers. And then - provision! I found on one of them, one single post that looked like it came from a real person, which was posted 11 hours before. I checked his profile, which looked genuine, and contacted him. He got back to me saying he'd had nothing but scams until I got in touch! So we had a video call where he showed me the flat (so I'd know it really existed!) and then I sent my sister to meet him and view it, and it was all good. No safety net here, just a personal connection and trust... and it's wonderful. Perfectly connected, large and homely - I couldn't ask for more. I get to work on the balcony!

Camp

As every year, the kids started our time here with a week-long holiday camp. This is deliberate, a holiday camp where they're surrounded by German speakers and have to muddle through - full immersion! After that, they're always reasonably fluent again.

In previous years, they went to the same camp every year, a dance and sports focused one which was lovely, but quite far away from where we are based this year. Plus, the heat we usually experience (Vienna summers can get up to 40 degrees) meant that the kids often found it hard to do sports outside. So this year I booked them into a swimming focused camp near to our place.

Swimming didn't go too well. They can swim, but found the teacher too strict and didn't enjoy the structured approach. So after the first day, we swapped - this particular camp ran different groups focusing on various activities, so the kids were able to choose alternatives; D(9) went with Street Art, which took him all over the city to legal graffiti walls, while N(10) chose Cheerleading, which she also enjoyed. So in the end, both kids had a great time at camp.

The first week

I worked most days, but also enjoyed some alone time - coffee at my favourite roof terrace for example - and we also met up with my sister at our traditional ice cream place, Tichy.

The heat hasn't been too stifling actually, it was definitely nice enough to get in the water but the kids weren't suffering as much as they usually did. It's never been beyond the mid-30's so far.