Hello!
For mums birthday, she got a ticket to come and see Jacob and I in England! It was so amazing knowing that mum was going to be with me in only a short few weeks!
As a present to mum, I bought her tickets to go to Vienna – where she grew up as a child. I had two plans for us to do when we got there! One of them was to see the place where mum lived and grew up for a bit, and the other was to go and see The Spanish Riding School of Vienna (http://www.srs.at/en_US/start-en/). This riding school is famous for the ‘dancing’ Lipizzaners.
I was so excited to be able to take mum to both of these places. We did get to see both, but we had some slight hiccups along the way.
Firstly, we hired a car to drive to Bad Waltersdorf. 2 hours into the drive, we got a flat tyre. By flat, I mean really really flat with a massive hole in the tyre flat. We pulled over and attempted to translate to non-English speaking people that we had no phone access to call the car company and we needed to borrow someones phone. We finall found some random tradie who was really helpful! He and mum had a conversation in really broken English, but he rang up the car company and tried to get things sorted. Basically, we were to drive the car back to the airport to swap it over for a new one… that wasnt going to happen and they don’t supply a spare tyre as ‘people could steal them’. So we had to wait in a supermarket car park for a few hours while our replacement car came to us.
Once that whole ordeal was over, we got on the road again. All was well until we got onto some pretty big, steep and windy hills when the torrential rain started. It wouldn’t have been so bad, but we were driving on the opposite side of the road and couldnt read the road signs! I don’t think mum and I have ever prayed so hard in our lives!
We finally got to mums old house. Mum was telling me all about her memories there, how her sister and herself would hide amogst the apple orchid and all this incredible stories. Then the most amazing thing happened, the people who now owned the house/bar turned up! We got out of the car and went to talk to them, they obviously didn’t speak English however when mum showed them all the old photos of the place, they let us in! Apart from a few changes, the place was exactly the same! The same tables and chairs, pictures hanging and little things were the same. Mum and the woman were having this weird conversatin that was half German, half English but they established that she worked there as a waitress when mum lived there all those years ago! It was crazy! She remembers my Opa (grandad) and everything. It was the most incredible day, and if the whole tyre and rain thing didn’t happen, I doubt we would have gotten to go inside and meet the lady. It was just fantastic!!
After leaving, we drove to our accomodation, which was nothing special. Literally a big box with beds and a bathroom. It was more of a truck stop than anything else, but it did the job..
Next day, we bravely got back into the car and drove into the heart of Vienna which was fun? We found a park, looked around for a bit before getting into line to see the Spanish Riding School. We were not allowed to take pictures of the inside, but I have attached the link to the website so you can see what it looks like! These horses live in a 5* stable area. They have their own saunas, get food made up individully based on each horses requirements and so much more. We watched the horses practice their ‘dancing’/exercises.
After doing the tour and exploring Vienna a bit more, we went to our accomodation to have some food and settle in before getting on a plane back home.
It was a fantastic few days and I’m so happy I got to take mum to both places and just see how happy she was!
I love you mumma!
Much love, xxx
