Salzburg: Special "The Hills are alive" edition

Salzburg, July 31, 2015

After Jocey was safely off the ground, happily headed back to family and friends in Hartland, we went to check into our flight to Zurich, Switzerland by way of Dusseldorf, Germany.  Don't ask.  As we were checking in there was a major power outage throughout the airport. Computer terminals still functioned, but conveyor belts did not, so none of the luggage could be moved.  Everything came to a stand still.  It was hot, and tempers were on edge.  We were flying a German airline which meant that a few of the German passengers were convinced that the whole thing was an Italian conspiracy.  Bottom line is that we ended up in Zurich about 30 minutes later then planned but the good news was our luggage arrived with us.  We collected our rental car and headed for Salzburg.  Before the trip Tim had done a calculation on mapquest and determined it would take about 4 hours to drive from Zurich to Salzburg.  It took closer to 5 and a half. It was probably a breathtaking drive, but as most of it was done after dark we will never know.  The fun started when we arrived in Salzburg as our rental car did not have GPS.  Have you ever looked at a German map? Ever tried pronouncing German street names. It's like talking with your mouth full of Weiner Schnitzel! At 1:00 in the morning we are stopping people on the street for help in finding our hotel.  We are lucky we weren't arrested.  Like much of our travel, we just kept blundering along and finally found the hotel. The hotel and area around it certainly looked better in the daylight then at 1:30 in the morning.

Today's major event, and why we are blogging tonight, was "The Sound of Music" Tour. Tim  picked this one out.  Lynda was happy to go along because, 1. she does like "The Sound of Music" and 2. the brouchure promised a bus ride into the Austrian country side.  She did say she refused to do any of the "sing-a-longs" on the bus.  What a party pooper.  Actually, she did get into the spirit of things, eventually, and joined in enthusiastically on "Do, Re, Me". The tour visited several of the sights where filming for the movie took place. This may shock you, but none of the filming was done in the home where the Von Trapp's lived or the church where the Captain and Maria were married. The Abbey in the movie is actually the Abbey that Maria was in, but, of course, we did not go there.  Two different castles were used to represent the Von Trapp estate, one for front exterior views and one for back exterior views. Robert Wise, the movie's producer, actually wanted to use the original house but at the time of filming the house was owned by a religious sect and they were not happy to have the film crew there, hence, plan B: two houses.  Our first stop was the rear exterior house.  It is a private residence now, owned by Harvard University believe it or not, so we had stand on the other side of the small lake you may remember from the movie to view the house. But still.  Maria and the kids fell out of the boat into the lake there.  Leisl and Friedrick kissed in the gazebo there. An aside: in 1991, the owners of the home donated the gazebo to the city of Salzburg and it was moved to a public park.  Our second stop was the public park to view the gazebo.  We did gather round our guide and sing the first line of "You are 16 going on 17".  At least, most of us did. More inside movie stuff. The gazebo we saw was used only for exterior shots.  It was too small for the choreography of the song. Leisl actually injured her ankle during rehearsal. So an exact replica, one and a half times larger, was built on the sound stage in Hollywood for the gazebo scenes.  Next, we did a drive by of the front exterior house.  It is also a private residence and there was no where for us to park a bus and walk up to get a picture.  It looks a rather bit less imposing in person then on the silver screen.  Our last stop was the church where the Captain and Maria's wedding took place.  It is in this lovely village about 45 minutes outside of Salzburg.  Along the way there was a stop for pictures of some drop dead beautiful scenery.  Once again, it was exciting to immediately recognize the outside of the church as well as the inside once we entered.  It really is a beautiful church. Lynda was so caught up in the moment that she walked down the entire length of the main aisle, holding her book like a bouquet of flowers. We were given extra time in Mondsee, the name of the village, to visit a local souvenier shop for "Sound of Music" cd's and dvd's, plus copies of the books that the real Maria Von Trapp wrote. Ugh!  We did take time to sample a famous Austrian apple strudel. On the way back to Salzburg we watched an interesting video of behind the scenes stuff about the movie with the women who played Leisl as the narrator. This video was unfortunately interupted for a couple of more sing-a-longs. Once back in Salzburg, our guide gave us a quick bonus tour. Next to our drop off point were located the Mirabel Gardens, supposedly world famous gardens, but maybe not so much as Lynda had never heard of  them.  At any rate, these gardens were used for part of the famous "Do, Re, Me" scene in the movie. We saw the fountain where the children walked around on the edge and the steps featured at the very end of the song.

We hope this quick, bonus edition of the blog hasn't bored you. Tim, in particular, found the tour to be exciting and great fun and was anxious to share it with you.  Tomorrow we will get back to more mundane travel news about Salzburg and include a review of our dinner/concert tomorrow evening featuring Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart.  Maybe the "Sound of Music" Tour looks better now.

Guten Tag