Getting to Cardiff from Graz is quite hard if you don’t want to lose a whole day. So I opted to first go to Vienna by train and then from there take a plane to London with a Bus ride being the last leg of the journey. This way I could leave the office at around 17:30 on Thursday and be in Cardiff the next day at noon. Sadly, the first flight out from Vienna to London is really early (06:40am) and having to be at the airport at around 05:30 to make it through all the post-9/11 security kind of destroys any hope on getting a cheap and good hotel for the night while using public transport ;-)
If you are in the same situation, Vienna Airport is actually a good place for you, esp. if you’re leaving from one of the G gates. Besides the new nice cots at every second third gate or so there is also a room at the very end of terminal that is designated as a relaxation room so you’re supposed to be able to sleep in there.
VIE has some nice cots in the new terminal to relax while waiting for your flight.
While the facilities were all in place, sadly, I had some bad luck. While the whole terminal was mostly empty at 11pm, first, when I came into the room someone was on the phone and stayed on it for nearly an hour eventhough this was supposed to be a relaxation room. Then someone else came in who had a bit of a breathing issue, colloqually called “snoring”, so there went the rest of the night. At 3am I simply gave up also because for other reasons: (1) I’m absolutely paranoid when it comes to my backpack so I ended up clutching it althe cots are designed for people slightly smaller than me, so I ended up with cramps throughout my lower body :-/
If, on the other hand, you want to work through the night, VIE has you covered here as well with tons of work-places with power sockets! But as I said: The hardware is there, you just shouldn’t be me ;-)
Btw.: big thanks to the nice person at the Austrian baggage-drop point for giving me the tip with the relaxation room!
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