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.

Since all the locations I have chosen are within quite a small area and we will not have to spend much time driving around, on this occasion we will be able to manage with just two working days. Everybody involved will arrive by car: the models Jenni and Elena are coming from Prague along with our make-up artist, Mili, while my friends Marek and Christian - who are as usual responsible for the video recordings - are driving from Frankfurt. I shall cover the first stage of my journey, from Vienna, by train. The weather in the Alps is not as predictable as in the Mediterranean region, even in high summer, so we have fixed the dates for this trip only a few days in advance; the forecast confidently predicts warm, sunny weather.

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