Talk about a wrong connection.
This is a cautionary tale about why you should always be very, very sure of what you're spending your money on - and how good your typing skills really are.
It's a lesson a very surprised 21-year-old German tourist learned this week, after he boarded a plane in Berlin to visit his girlfriend in Sydney, Australia for what was supposed to be a four-week Christmas holiday.
The journey seemed a lot longer than usual, but Tobi Gutt attributed that to the distance between Europe and the Land Down Under.
He came dressed for the weather - a T-shirt, and shorts, since the country is in the middle of its summer at this time of year.
So you can imagine his shock and surprise when he got off the plane to discover snow on the ground, frost on the trees and a temperature that was at the freezing mark.
A freak Aussie weather pattern? Not exactly.
Seems Gutt had accidentally typed the wrong name into his web browser when he ordered his plane tickets online and wound up flying 13,000 miles to a place called Sidney, Montana.
The oil town only boasts about 5,000 souls and promises tourists such exciting events as "The Best of the West Beef Showcase," "The Lewis and Clark Bicentennial" and "The Lone Tree Gun Show."
But Gutt never actually got to see any of those dazzling attractions.
He finally realized his mistake when he got to the larger city of Billings, where he was supposed to board yet another flight.
He was stuck with just a thin jacket and spent three days in the airport while his parents wired him the 600 Euros - about $920 Canadian - he needed to buy a ticket all the way back.
Through it all, Gutt didn't suspect a thing.
"I did wonder but I didn't want to say anything," he told a German newspaper. "I thought to myself, you can fly to Australia via the United States."
His mother can't believe what happened. "I didn't notice the mistake as my son is usually good with computers," Sabine Gutt relates.
Still, it could have been worse. With no winter gear, this real life accidental tourist could have ended up in another Sydney - the one in Nova Scotia.
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