Our second journey this year will take us to a destination which is unusually close to home: Carinthia, the southernmost part of the Austrian Alps. As I moved from Germany to Austria several years ago, I don't even need to cross a border - and for the other members of the team this also involves far less travelling time than any of our previous destinations.

But for precisely this reason we shall be able to make use of a completely different atmosphere for our work, far from sun-burnt landscapes and Mediterranean beaches. The mountains of Carinthia are characterised by great deal of water, lush vegetation and a large number of abandoned wooden buildings, darkened by the effects of the harsh weather over many years. Watermills are typical features of this region; since there are plenty of fast-flowing streams and rivers, water power has been employed over the centuries in a variety of ways - not only for milling wheat but also for cutting up trees from the mountain forests, as well as processing iron and textiles. Many of these ancient industrial monuments are still intact, and today they stand alone and forgotten in the middle of an idyllic landscape.

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The girls:
Elena	Jenni