Taylor Swift: Vienna ticket holders feel both disappointment and relief

Fellow Swiftie Natascha Strobl, an Austrian political scientist and author, was planning to go to two of the three gigs, and said she was “absolutely devastated”.

“I was looking forward to it for over a year, and made bracelets and planned outfits and planned the whole day,” she told BBC News.

“There are people sitting in hotel rooms who don’t know what to do, people who are supposed to fly over who don’t know what to do now. They’re in shock. There’s a lot of crying, of course.”

But she agreed that there could be “no debate when it comes to security”.

“If it’s not safe, it’s not safe,” she said, explaining that no-one could risk the prospect of a repeat of previous “devastating and shocking” atrocities like at Manchester arena, when 22 people were killed in a suicide bombing at an Ariana Grande concert in 2017.

Last week, three young girls were killed in a knife attack on a Taylor Swift-themed dance class in Southport.

“Of course, safety is paramount,” she said. “But still, we’re allowed to feel absolutely terrible about it.”

The news about the Vienna plotters has made people more nervous, she said.

“That’s what they want. They want to make us feel unsafe. They want to disturb our everyday life. So they won at least a little bit. And that’s just heartbreaking.

“I want to meet up with the others [fans] and at least console ourselves and be sad together, because we really, really wanted to go to the concerts, and being sad alone in our homes or hotel rooms is not helping anybody.”