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German tourists ends up in Sidney instead of Sydney!
A 21-year-old German tourist who wanted to visit his girlfriend in Sydney, Australia, landed 13,000 kilometres away near Sidney, Montana, after mistyping his destination on a flight booking website.
Dressed for the Australian summer in t-shirt and shorts, Tobi Gutt left Germany on Saturday for a four-week holiday, but instead of arriving “down under,” he found himself on a different continent and bound for the chilly state of Montana.
“I did wonder but I didn’t want to say anything,” Gutt told the Bild newspaper. “I thought to myself, you can fly to Australia via the United States.”
Gutt’s airline ticket routed him via the city of Portland, Oregon, to Billings, Montana and only as he was about to board a commuter flight to Sidney, an oil town of about 5,000 people, did he realise his mistake.
The hapless tourist, who had only a thin jacket to keep out the winter cold, spent three days in Billings airport before he was able to buy a new ticket to Australia with €600 in cash that his parents and friends sent over from Germany.
“I didn’t notice the mistake as my son is usually good with computers,” his mother, Sabine, told Reuters.
Bev
Editor in chief Bev Fearis has been a travel journalist for 25 years. She started her career at Travel Weekly, where she became deputy news editor, before joining Business Traveller as deputy editor and launching the magazine’s website. She has also written travel features, news and expert comment for the Guardian, Observer, Times, Telegraph, Boundless and other consumer titles and was named one of the top 50 UK travel journalists by the Press Gazette.
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