Today, we drove to the town of Schwatz. If I said it was completely different to all the other Austrian towns we have seen so far, I lying. What's more, we observed another poorly attended wedding (this one, at least, had a groom, but only four guests) and went into the - EEP! - cathedral.

(Other repeat appearances: an actual Mini, another wedding [although for this one there was quite a crowd] and another school trip.)

By the time we got back to the car, the midday heat had thoroughly exhausted us. We drove to another town, which bore the name Stanz, had lunch, then set off to see what "The Rough Guide To Austria" declared was a small but impressive gorge.

"Two hundred metres to the toll booth," Mum read from a sign, as we dragged our feet along the path.

"Two hundred metres," I groaned. "How far does that mean it'll be to the gorge? I'm not walking seven miles again - or even one mile."

Ha!

The cheeky geen in the toll booth only charged us for two adults and a child. Mimph! According to the sign, you had to be six to fourteen years old to count as a child. I'm nearly nineteen, for Mykos's sake! And surely I don't look that young: bus conductors unhesitatingly charge me the full fare and I can get into nightclubs. I suppose I shouldn't complain, because everything is well expensive here, but I am not amused!

Paying to go on a walk seemed a bit annoying too. I am convinced people find employment here by setting up camp by road sides and charging foolish tourists to go past. But we certainly got our money's worth. Small but impressive gorge? Niagara Falls will be a disappointment now. The gorge was gorgeous.

Sadly, the walk that took you to the top was not. We're left breathless every time we climb the stairs to our rooms and we're only on the second floor. This, seriously, involved climbing a thousand steps, and through some slimy Crash Bandicoot level 3 style caves too. (Except there were no fire-breathing rocks and monsters, luckily.)

After a long rest at the top, we decided to descend another way, along a fairly flat track. Unfortunately a thunderstorm began and it started raining. Heavily. Naturally, yesterday's anoraks had not accompanied us. We sheltered under some trees, but this was a useless measure. Realising the rain might not cease for a few hours, we carried on and it eased off.

But then we reached a crossroad, where a sign told us that Stanz was in two directions. Given that we were now in the midst of some meadows, I declared we should go in the general direction of the gorge. So we started along the track, when all of a sudden, it stopped.

Leaving us with two exits down steep slopes through trees.

We chose one, and the path was very dangerous. Such was the angle of the ground that walking was impossible unless you employed a painstakingly crab-like movement, which wasn't advisable since it was raining again. Therefore, it was necessary to run in bursts, the only way of stopping yourself being to smack into a tree. The slippery rocks that crossed the path made me stumble three times and Mum actually fell over.

Eventually, we reached the bottom, only to find that they other route would have taken us to exactly the same place, only in a far more reasonable fashion. Mimph.

We drove to a very funchie lake (big and turquoise) beside which we sat on a bench for about an hour, recovering. Then we headed back to the hotel, getting caught in a huge lightning storm.

Just as I was about to wri five minutes to the hut on the hill." Oh good, thought I. But an hour and a half later, we were still literally miles from the hut on the hill.

Luckily, we didn't go there, but there was, of course, the going down bit.

I may need to stop being so dodgy-minded. Tonight, me and Mum were reading a highly stupid women's magazine and doing a personality quiz to discover your favourite type of holiday. One of the questions was, "Do you let things get on top of you?"

"Depends who it is," I answered automatically. Both parents were well shocked.

Then we did a crossword. "Hundred year long period (7)," I read out. "Painful," I answered myself, and Mum looked deeply nounplussed.

Then we went for a wander in Mayrhofen (the town where we're staying). It is a bizarre place. Every time we we enter it, it alters its geography. Not only do one way streets change direction during the day, but the buildings are either playing musical chairs of have access to a cloning machine. Because there can't be two places called Steinbock (a steinbock is an ibex, a creature I've only heard of twice in my however-many years), five Hotel Elisabeths and six places called "Foto Willy".

There are some other bizarre sights to be seen too. The letters LZ are written on the pavement in a few places - are Led Zeppelin really popular here or something? The music one hears in and around the hotel indicates otherwise.

There's a shop called "Drogerie Reformhaus". Our theories are that as well as being a chemist's it's the local parliament where reforms are passed, or that after giving you drugs, they reform you.

And the fashion on display - is chopping your head off, holding you forearms out to the side at 90 degrees and wearing a coat very much off your right shoulder really considered chic here?

Wednesday 5 July 2000

Today we went to Salzburg. It was one of the few days when I remembered to take my digital camera with me.

It is a city with very strange traffic lights. In Britain, they are very simple: a red upright man when you have to stand still, and a green walking man when can cross. But here, as if the fact that the red sign depicts TWO people wasn't freaky enough, one is holding onto a bike. But here's the weirdest bit of all: on the green light, the person with the bike is standing in a different position. Argh!

We went to the cathedral - never! However, this time I was able to commemorate it with a neck-breaking picture:

Then we climbed a really steep hill (argh!) to get to the castle. From which I took yet another picture:

After that, I was desperate for some chocolate, but it took us about two hours to find some. There were thousands of shops selling t-shirts with the manuscript of Eine Kleine Nachtmusik printed on them (another one I liked was a black one with Microsoft-style text spelling "Widows 98" printed on it) but nowhere could the simple bar of chocolate be purchased. You would have thought shops marked "Tabac" would stock the stuff, but no. Eventually, though, we found a Spar.

Then we went to a Mozart museum and his birthplace, where I learnt two things:

1) Mozart was the seventh of seven children, all of whom were called Johann or Maria. Fortunately cases of "Mariiiiiia!" "Which one?" were avoided by five of them dying in childbirth; still, you would have thought the parents would have given up with such unfortunate names.

2) Mozart's surviving sister, five years older than him, he called Horseface.

When we got back to the car, it was full of ants!

Thursday 6 July 2000

The world is being Strange again. For a start, we've had a call from The Shop informing us that someone has stolen the phone. No, this isn't a physical impossibility - they have several phones - but it's still rather odd.

And we have just spent about an hour watching a helicopter hovering above the nearby forest. Eventually, it lowered and picked up something that looked for all the world like an old grey dustbin.

No. of flies swatted today: 53
No. of flies I attempted to swat but got away: 107.
When will I ever be free of insects?

I have definitely spent too much time with my parents, for my punning muscles are stronger than ever. On the (twelve-mile-long-but-mercifully-entirely-flat) walk we went on today, we encountered some cows. Their bells were very loud and irritating. "There's one with no bell," Dad pointed out.

"They should give it the No-bell Peace Prize," I said, without a second's hesitation.

If I could give you one tip for the future, sunscreen would be it. Not only that, but use factor 25 and apply it regularly. See, my mother only brought factor-20 with her, and I, CZ, Queen Of Bloxed, Maiden Most Fair, am not amused. Both my arms have gone the colour of post boxes (British ones, anyway; the Austrian sort are yellow), and my already-stiff neck (due to aevil headrest on bed) has turned thoroughly red.

Every time we go to a dam (we were at one today), we see a sign saying Kraftwerk. This has led me to observe that there are some very odd German band names around. Kraftwerk, my mother tells me, means "energy construction". Bauhaus, according to the phrase book, means "building house". And as for Die Toten Hosen - the dead trousers?

Friday 7 July 2000

Today we went to a town named Rattenburg. It looked a bit different from most Austrian towns: there were no chalets, the buildings were of varying colours and the river was grey. We spent most of the time sitting on top of a small turret, but wandered through the streets a bit, where we noticed a pot of ornamental stone garden animals with a sign saying, "Do not feed."

Then we went to a lake that you weren't allowed to walk anywhere near, and a town named Kufstein where it rained too much for us to exit the car.

Saturday 8 July 2000

Today, we went to Innsbruck. We walked past a music shop where there was an advert for a "groovig und coolen rock 'n' rade sehr guten drummer + bassist" seeking a band and then went to a museum. Then we went to a pretty boring nearby town called Seefeld where we found yet more people on a school trip.

I wonder: how many people's parents call benches forms? How many people's parents call picnics "picanics"? And how many people's parents speak in German for no apparent reason? I know we're in Austria at the moment, but they do it wherever they are, and now it's always, "Look at that schloB!" or "Here's a nice Kirche!"

And a question specifically for the eighteen and nineteen year olds reading this. Do your parents drag you out of your (admittedly not very) warm (the radiator doesn't work) (admittedly not very) comfortable (given bed's aforediscussed aevilness) bedroom, make you don your coat, the collar irritating your stiff and sunburnt neck, and force you to stand in the rain and watch a brass band you could hear from where you were and didn't particularly want to hear even then?

Didn't think so.

Then again, it was me who was marching along in time to the music and jumping in puddles at appropriate moments.

Sunday 9 July 2000

We have proof! Someone *does* keep turning the town around! At 2pm, Mum and I went for a five mile walk, heading in the direction of Zell an Zimmer, since Dad is ill and neither of us fancied driving anywhere. And while we were examining the first sign post we encountered, a man carrying a pair of pliers came up behind us, snarling. He then proceeded to turn the sign around!

Monday 10 July 2000

Eep! A strange-smelling German-speaking man has just entered my room, measured the distance between the hooks and battery holding up my scanky curtains and left again!

Sunday 16 July 2000

I am back from Austria now (for all of six days, before setting off for Canada), and last night, Chris and I attended an Alice Cooper gig in Newcastle.

Whatever your feelings towards heavy metal, I demand that you go and see him. The music sounds brilliant and the theatrics are wonderful. How many other performers incorporate a realistic decapitation of themselves into their music and then get reincarnated after the drum solo?

And it was funny: "I come all the way to Newcastle to find some jerk in the front row is wearing a Kiss t-shirt!" Alice, for his part, wore one saying "Britney Wants Me" on the front and "Dead" on the back. He's definitely cool for a 51- or 52-year-old.

Heck, even the support band was decent! It was, undoubtedly, the best concert I've been to. That isn't saying much, bearing in mind I've only seen Jethro Tull (exactly: who?), Suede and Mansun (I was miles from the stage), Northern Symphonia (the yoj), The Stranglers (there were only about twenty people there) and The Australian Pink Floyd (what a treat!) But it was still deeply funchie.

Afterwards, we bought matching t-shirts, except his was extra large, mine was just large, and even then it reaches my knees. (They tried to sell an extra extra large one, the bleendogs, although I suppose this could have just indicated they took me as a really big fan.)

Tuesday 18 July 2000

It's been a long day.

Quite literally. (Oh dear, I mentally pronounced that 'liderally'.) I've never travelled back in time on an outgoing flight before. I've never flown on my own either. And I've never had to deal with a connecting flight. Bearing in mind this is Zed "I can't find my way around my home town with a map" Leppelin we're talking about, I am most pleased with how far I've made it. For here I am, sitting beside gate 70, terminal C, one hour and ten minutes before my flight to Toronto leaves.

Just hope this is the right place and that I see my suitcase again. In any other country, it takes at least five minutes to hand over your luggage, never mind find the correct place to do this. But here, in America, land of the paranoid, I simply handed my case (well, flung it: it's very difficult to make a polite gesture with something that heavy) to one of two possible baggage handlers. He glanced at the label, put it on a conveyor belt with everyone else's stuff, then shooed me and my aevil trolley (they could have told me you had to press down the handle to make it move!) on our way. I suppose they don't care too much about stuff that's leaving their precious country, only what comes in.

Another thing they don't do here is warn you of the temperature. In Salzburg they confessed it was a mere seventeen degrees (centigrade); in Manchester, they proudly announced that they'd managed fifteen degrees; but here a "Don't worry about freezing to death, it's six hundred degrees in the airport" wouldn't have gone amiss.

I realise that I have not yet spoken the name of this treacherous place. This is because I'm not entirely sure where I am. I think it's Newark, New York, New Jersey, but it could equally well be New York, Newark, New Jersey. Or even Newark, New Jersey, New York. Whichever, can't you Americans invent anything old?

Anyway. Bet you didn't know I was going to New York, did you? Me neither. Until I got to Glasgow airport, I didn't even know what country Newark was in, and only the arrival times indicated that it was in this continent at all, given that there's a Newark in England too. But nope, it's somewhere in North East America, it would appear.

However, New York dwellers, there's no need to evacuate just yet. For one thing, I'll be safely out of the area by the time you read this. For another, all the Americans on the plane (the majority of the passengers - why would anyone to go to America unless they lived there?) were swift to comment loudly that the airport was nowhere near New York.

I'm really confused. I know New York is a state as well as a city, but isn't New Jersey a state too? So how am I in both? Or is the airport just called New York Airport for the heck of it, in the same way that Manchester airport is called Manchester airport even though it's approximately as close to Manchester as I am to ever making sense? Help!

Apart from that, things have been going well so far. Birthday presents have been arriving at a steadily increasing rate. (My birthday isn't until 11th August, hint hint, but I don't return home until the 21st.) On Saturday, my uncle gave me a card accompanied by thirty pounds and on Monday, Will gave me a card. The envelope was marked, "Do not open until 11th August". "Aw, can I open it now?" I asked. "Go on," he said, but inside it said, "If you opened this before 11th August it is proof of your geenery." It also wished me best luck in the land of Smill, and reminded me to take a picture of Chris with me for those long, lonely evenings. (A reminder, I hasten to add, that I completely ignored.)

And today, my aunt sent me a card with ten pounds enclosed and, as always, two National Lottery scratch cards. (I won one pound on one, yay!) And Noj broke Law #1 Of Being Noj Or Roe by getting up before one pm so he could give me the Velvet Goldmine soundtrack. (Really, I don't know what's got into either of them. A few days ago, Roe got up before 3pm AND let his sister use the computer, and after three years of promises, Noj put his website up!!! Complete with a webcam!)

After that, my parents took me to Glasgow airport. As usual, I found some road signs to entertain me. Most of the counties in Britain make some claim to fame when you enter them - "Shakespeare's County" or "Hadrian's Wall County" or something - but as we crossed one boundary, a sign said, "South Lanarkshire: Thriving On Safe Driving". Perhaps its main tourist attraction is a seatbelt factory?

Inside the airport, my parents were told to stand back while I was quizzed about the age of my suitcase, where it had been during the night, if I had any electrical equipment, if I had lent it to anyone recently and if I'd been given anything to put in it. Chris, I am never going to forgive you for giving me a flipping tea cosy as a present for Sarah Yoj's mother! (He went to stay with her family a few weeks before I did, since he knows her over the Internet oo.) I also grew a little apprehensive (in a plant pot) about how I would fare in America, since I had enough difficulty understanding the Scottish accent.

Then we sat around, people-watching. We sat opposite a girl of about seven, holding a mobile phone. It's sad, but I suppose I can't really talk, since Dad has turned into a yuppie. Not only did he think to take his mobile into the airport with him, but within twenty minutes, he had received two calls.

Naturally my gate required the longest gait. Amazingly, in Newark, gate 70 needed the least walking, although I did have to take the monorail first, which involved balancing precariously in the centre of a small cubicle while airport officials prevented us from being lazy by occupying all the seats.

I boarded the plane to Newark successfully, although I initially took the wrong seat, and spent almost the entire flight reading. I should have read "Fade", knowing that I would meet my online friend Meaghan a few days later, who would force me to phone its author, Robert Cormier (something she has done several times). However, this proved an impossibility, with "Harry Potter And The Goblet Of Fire" burning a hole in my backpack.

I also had to fill in a scary customs form. Scary because I did this well in advance (read: one hour into the seven hour flight), but I messed up and wrote that my date of birth was "female". Then, about half an hour before the plane landed, they announced, "Be sure to fill in your form from the bottom-" (oh, of course) "-because they won't accept it if there's any errors." Luckily, the guy just took it without a first glance, never mind a second.

I wonder: even if you were a Nazi between 1939 and 1945, would you really admit to it?

Even though my seat was in an awkward position to watch the film, I got some in-flight entertainment: "We're experiencing some bumpy weather."

Wednesday 19 July 2000

Gah! So much for Zed's Super Beat Jet Lag In One Day method. Last night, I thought, "If I stay up till a normal local time - 11.30pm, say - even if that does make it 4.30am back home, I should wake up at a reasonable hour."

So I did just that. Even then, I wasn't especially tired, although it was heavenly to crawl between the sheets. But after a few hours of highly unimaginative dreams about cars and airports, I woke up at 4am, totally alert. "It's 9am," my brain was obviously saying, "get up you dozy geen." So I lay awake for two and a half hours, before deciding to get up and write a bit. Aren't you the lucky ones?

I boarded the plane to Toronto at the appropriate time. However, forty five minutes after the noted take-off time, an announcement said, "We cannot take off unless all passengers are seated", despite the fact that all passengers were seated and had been for quite some time. About ten minutes later, however, the plane took off - and, oddly enough, landed in Toronto at almost exactly the right time.

But before I could indulge in the yoj of meeting Sarah Yoj, I had to go through customs, who asked me if my parents knew where I was and what was in the sandwiches I'd brought with me. Then they sent me to Immigration. I was a little worried at this - I was sure Sarah Yoj and family were nice people, but I didn't necessarily want to live with them forever. However, the guy at the desk accepted that I wasn't here to stay. The only problem came about while reading the section of my customs form where I'd written my address.

"You're staying in Brampton?"

"No, that's my home address."

"You mean, that's where you're staying?"

"No, that's where I live." Then light suddenly dawned. You and I know that when I say "Brampton" I mean that thriving market town in northern England where Charles Dickens once spent the night. He, however, thought I meant Brampton, the 300000-citizen settlement near Toronto. "Brampton in England."

"There's a Brampton in England? You're kidding!" I managed to convince him, though.

Then I had to wait for my luggage to appear. Eventually, at 7.30, an hour after the plane had landed, I began staggering into the main body of the airport with my suitcase. The geenic trolleys required a $1 coin, and do they ever give you coins when you initially acquire foreign currency? In case you've never had the pleasure of doing this, no they don't! So I would walk five metres, then bang my suitcase down on the ground and rest. Finally, I found Sarah Yoj and her mother. Unfortunately for them, they'd been at the airport since 5pm! Still, they helped me and my possessions to their car, and we set off on the two-hour-drive to Port Colborne, population - well, I'm not sure: if you enter it in one direction it says 18450, but the other way it says 19000.

We arrived at her house at about 10, where I phoned my parents. They were not terribly thrilled to hear from me at 3am; Noj was even less impressed, having been kept off the Internet all evening. See, I'd promised to call them on my mobile phone as soon as I made contact with Sarah Yoj's family. However, this plan went a bit pear-shaped, for despite my parents' identical phone functioning perfectly well in deepest darkest Crete, mine refused to operate in either America or Canada.

Nothing much else happened. I was given a guided tour of the house and shown where I would sleep, in Sarah Yoj's bed. (Yes, yes, Sarah Yoj slept downstairs. Geen.)

I only have two complaints. Firstly, the ceiling is too low. I, at my imposing 5'2", banged my head on it. Admittedly, I was bouncing on the bed (just a mattress, really) at the time, but not vigorously at all. (Chris, if you were concerned, stayed in Ruth's room, which has a slightly higher ceiling.)

Secondly, remember how Will instructed me to bring a picture of Chris with me? Well, guess what's on the wall right beside the bed? I'm not sure whether to say "awwwwww!" or "arrrrrgh!" Either way, I'm holding Sarah Yoj fully responsible for all stupid dreams that will no doubt occur while I'm here.

Right, I'm off to try and have some.

(Apologies for the lack of subsequent entries concerning this leg of the journey. I did write some, but I can't be bothered to get them into a viewable state.)