The Hills Are Alive... (Day 26 - GToE)

Okay, if you decide to travel to Salzburg and have seen the movie, Sound of Music at least a couple of times in your life, you must... I repeat.... MUST go on a Sound of Music Tour. Is it cheesy? Yes. Is it ridiculous? Absolutely. Was it incredibly fun? You betcha! Okay, I admit I'm a huge fan of the movie, so when I decided I was going to visit Salzburg, I knew that I needed to go on a SOM tour. First a little background - only the outdoor scenes from the movie were filmed in Salzburg. All indoor scenes were done on sets in Hollywood.

I awoke very excited this morning, knowing that I would be visiting the outdoor filming locations for this movie. The first stop on the tour is Mirabell Gardens, which were prominently featured in the song "Do-Re-Mi". Now, sadly, I actually did not attend this site with the tour group, because they forgot to pick me up from my hostel. So by the time they picked me up, the group had already visited the Gardens, but I would see them on my own later when we returned. Next stop: Leopoldskron Palace (photo). This location was used to film all the backyard/lake scenes. Remember when Maria and the children fell into the lake? You don't. Go watch the movie. Next it was onto Hellbrunn Palace. If you remember the gazebo from the movie ("Sixteen Going on Seventeen"), it was originally located at Leopoldskron Palace, but they got tired of people scaling the wall to photograph the gazebo so it was moved to Hellbrunn Palace. On the way to Hellbrunn, we passed the location for the Von Trapp house, which is different than Leopoldskron. Schloss Frohnburg is now utilized for venue and student accommodations for Mozarteum University Salzburg, but in the movie it was the exterior location for the front of the house. No tours allowed, but I managed to get a couple of fairly decent photos from the bus. Next, onto Nonnberg Abbey, which is still an active convent today. It is where the "real" Maria was a novice and where Maria and the Captain married in real life. Sadly, no visits are allowed to the abbey but tomorrow I'm going to go look at the church. We then traveled about 30 minutes to the Salzburg lake district. Along the way, what did we do?? Listened and sang to the soundtrack, of course! Silly? Yes! But again incredibly fun. The lake district is shown at the beginning of the movie when Maria is on the mountain. Interesting side note, there is a hotel which is situated at the tip of a mountain peak outside of Salzburg. It takes an hour by train to get there. I took a photo of it, but I'm not sure if you'd appreciate the distance. But I digress. Our last stop was in the village of Mondsee which was used as the location for the wedding scene in the movie. We then returned to Salzburg where I went into the Mirabell Gardens.

After completing the SOM tour, I decided that instead of touring the fortress, which I believe might take a few hours, I would tour the New Town section of Salzburg. Mirabell Gardens is in the New Town section, therefore it made sense. After Mirabell, I went to the Mozart Residence. If you remember, yesterday, I visited Mozart's birthplace. Today, it was the house in which Mozart resided with his family from 1773 to 1781 when he finally moved to Vienna. Technically, the original building was largely destroyed during World War II, but was faithfully reconstructed and opened to the public as a second Mozart museum in 1996. The museum houses artifacts of the Mozart family including Mozart's pianoforte and violin. Again, this museum is really only for the true Mozart devotee.

I strolled around New Town for a little while until I finally found my way to St. Sebastian cemetery. While Wolfgang is buried in Vienna, his mother in Paris, and his sister in Salzburg's Old Town, this cemetery holds the final remains of Mozart's wife, Constanze, and his father, Leopold. Also interred in this cemetery is Prince Archbishop Wolf Dietrich and Renaissance scientist and physician, Paracelsus, best known for developing laudanum as a painkiller. While trolling around the cemetery, I came across some weird headstones.

On my way back to my hostel, I took on final photo as part of the SOM tour: the Mozartsteg bridge, which was featured in the song "Do-Re-Mi". I then spent a little time relaxing in my room before heading out to a concert. 

Thanks to the generosity of my friend, Paul, tonight, I went to the Fortress to attend a Mozart concert. The Salzburg Chamber Ensemble plays 300 nights up at the fortress. It was a very similar music program that I heard 3 nights ago in Vienna: a mixture of Mozart and Strauss. Tonight, there was some added Dvořák. While tonight's ensemble played beautifully, I kept thinking that they didn't seem to be enjoying themselves nearly as much as the ensemble I saw in Vienna. It's possible they were having a great time, but you couldn't tell from their faces. But there is no denying the talent of the 5 instrumentalists (2 violins, a viola, a cello, and a clarinet).

All in all, it was another fine day in Salzburg. Tomorrow is my final day in this fair city and plan on spending most of it touring the Fortress. Tomorrow night, I head to Munich. Don't forget to check out all the SOM and New Town photos in the Day 26 photo album on my GToE photo site.

Salzburg at night looking down from the fortress