Floody, I wish you luck and I hope you have a good time. Just a small tip. If your travelling by car, the border between Switzerland and Austria may be marked with nothing more than a small speed hump, and the customs hut may appear to be deserted, but whatever you do, stop. If you don't, your rear view mirror will fill with armed men in uniform and the stillness of the night will be shattered with searchlights and klaxons. I'm able to pass on this handy hint because yesterday, while driving in convoy with a gang of lads from St Moritz to Innsbruck, a man suddenly leapt out of his darkened hut and shouted “Achtung”. I have no idea what “Achtung” means, except that it usually precedes a bout of gunfire followed by many years of digging tunnels. I therefore pulled over and stopped, unlike the rest of the guys, who didn't. The guard, white with rage, venom and fury demanded my passport and refused to give it back until I had furnished him with details of the people in the other vehicles which had dared to sail past his guard tower. I'd often wondered how I'd get on in this sort of situation. Would I allow myself to be tortured to save my colleagues? How strong is my will, how long would I hold out? About three seconds, I'm ashamed to say! I blabbed like a baby, handing over the guys names, addresses and mobile phone numbers. So they came back, and the drivers were manhandled from the trucks and frogmarched up to the stop sign they'd ignored. Their passports were confiscated and then it was noticed that all our equipment had not been checked out of Switzerland. We were in trouble. So we raised our hands, and do you know what? The guards didn't even bat an eyelid. The sight of eight English people standing at a border post in the middle of Europe in the year 2012, with their arms in the air didn't strike them as even remotely odd. Anywhere else in Europe, they couldn’t have cared less. You only know when you've gone from France into Belgium for instance, because the road suddenly goes all bumpy. French customs are normally on strike and their opposite numbers in Belgium are usually hidden behind a mountain of chips with a mayonnaise topping. But in Austria things are very different. Here you will not find a fatty working out his pension. Our man on the road from St Moritz to Innsbruck was a lean, frontline storm trooper in full camouflage fatigues and he seemed to draw no distinction between the Englander, the Turk or Slav. Nobody it seems, is welcome in the Austro-Hungarian empire. The other lads were very disappointed at the way I'd grassed them up and kept referring to me as 'Von Strimmer' or simply 'The Invertebrate', and were ordered back to Switzerland. And me, for selling them out, I was allowed to proceed to Innsbruck. Which does invite a question. How did the guard know where I was going? We had never mentioned our destination and yet he knew. It gets stranger, because minutes later I was pulled over for speeding and even though I had a hired Zurich registered car, the policeman addressed me straightaway in English. This puzzled me as I drove on and into the longest tunnel in the world. That was puzzling too, as it wasn't marked on the map. What's happening on the surface that they don't want me to see? Finally I arrived at the hotel into which I'd been booked, but a mysterious woman in a full-length evening gown explained menacingly that she had let my room to someone else. And that all the other hotels in Innsbruck were fully booked. I ended up miles away at a hotel run by a man we shall call “The Downloader“. “So, you are an Englisher”, he said when I checked in. “There are many good people in England”, he added, with the sort of smile that made me think he might be talking about Harold Shipman. Something is going on in Austria! Let's not forget these people are past masters at subterfuge. I mean, they managed to convince the entire planet that Adolf Hitler was a German and his trademark salute was actually the last remnant of his walking against the wind impression. I wrote this post earlier, hoping to send it later but I can’t log on. Maybe it's because “The Downloader” is up in his attic, looking at unsavoury images of bondage and the like, or maybe it's because I'm being watched. Either way, I'm nervous about smuggling text like this past customs in the morning, when I'm due to fly home. I shall try to rig up some kind of device using my mobile phone, hoping these words reach you. If they do, yet I mysteriously disappear, for God's sake send help. I'm at the . . . . .
