Guest User
December 27, 2021
After ski today, we stopped by the street front restaurant of this hotel, hoping to get a pizza for lunch. We sat down and a waiter came by to ask what we would like. Before we could respond, he zoomed off to attend other customers and to work behind the bar. He came back a while later, to say he needed to check our covid vaccination records. We immediately took the records out and put them on the table. But he was off again before checking them. Ten minutes later, we approached him at the bar, and he came back to our table. "OK, I asked you for your vaccination records but you had to get them out of your bag and I had other customers to attend to!" Truth was: we carried no bags and the records had been produced the moment he asked for them from our pockets. Now, he looked at the records for a moment and then said, I need to see your IDs. We proceeded to show him digital copies of our passports. He said, no, I need to see your actual passports. How would I know these were really yours? We said, we have been here for seven days and not any other establishment asked us for the physical copies of our passports. Do you really expect us to carry our passports on ski slopes? Yes, he replied, you must carry your passports at all times. It's the law in Austria. We told him that if that's the case, we were leaving. He said, yes, get out! As we were preparing to leave, another man came to us. He was apparently the manager. "Is everything all right?" he asked. We explained to him what he had obviously already been briefed on. Yes, we need to see your passports. he said. We replied that we only have digital copies and as they were not accepted we were leaving. He said, yes, get out! Get out now! He said further that it is Austrian law that we must carry our passports at all times while in Austria. As we were walking out of the restaurant, he said he was going to inform the authorities that we don't have our passports with us and got on the phone. We were so scared that once back at our hotel we immediately made legal enquiries on the matter. For anyone who's interested, we've learned that the Austrian law requires that tourists keep their passports within the same district of where they are, within reasonable reach, meaning reachable within one hour.