When people hear of Austria, and most particularly of Salzburg, many of them first think of The Sound of Music. It was filmed in and around Salzburg (and a lot in Hollywood studios). I will assume all of you are familiar with the based-on-a-true-story of Captain Von Trapp who marries the postulant (potential-nun-in-training) Maria who was governess to his seven children and the family’s escape from the Nazis in World War 2.
Anyhow, I saw in the guide book that this tour existed. It was advertised as being very cheesy and all in English. Just my style! I presented the idea to the family, but some weren’t interested. And with the price of the tour, it was good that only Libby and I really wanted to go.
Saturday afternoon, we hopped on the Sound of Music tour bus, which was packed full of all sorts of people speaking all different languages.
First, our tour guide (who was full of puns and silly comments) gave us a tour of Salzburg.
Since we had just spend the last few days touring Salzburg, we were familiar with many of the places and sites he pointed out. Then began the REAL Sound of Music stuff. (As a side note, I’m not a huge SOM fan. I like the movie well enough and have seen it a few times, but I cannot quote along with it or anything like that. We mostly went on the tour because we wanted to see the scenery.)
Our first stop was “The Back of the House.” In the movie, the house overlooks a beautiful lake.
They filmed the capsizing rowboat scene in this lake. However, the actual house is never seen in any of the lake scenes. That is because they used a different house for the front of the house, and when they showed the back of the house, they showed the back of the other house!
The famous Sixteen Going on Seventeen gazebo used to be in this yard. However, people kept jumping the fence to see it and photograph it, and it really annoyed the owners of the house (which has become a conference center), so they moved it. Where did they move it? To our next stop, the Hellbrun Palace.
We had wanted to tour this place, but it was closed for the season. It is best known for its trick fountains. If you tour here, you get soaked, as the wild and crazy Prince Archbishop who built the place had a wacky sense of humor and made fountains that are gorgeous but also water that shoots out of chairs, sidewalks, statues, and more. When we got there, the public grounds were open and covered in sunbathing public. But the palace itself was closed.
This is the front of the palace. You may be wondering to yourself as I have been this whole trip, “Why are so many buildings painted this hideous golden yellow?” Well, it turns out that this yellow is ROYAL. You could only paint stuff this color if you were a Habsburg. Then, when the Habsuburgs were no more, Lowe’s started selling it. (ha ha)
These palace grounds are where they decided to move the famous gazebo so that the whole world could pose in front of it.
Or dance around singing, “I’ll take care of youuuuuu!”
We began to drive to our final destination, Mondsee. But on the way, the tour guide pointed out the house that was the FRONT of the house. It’s the one Maria walks up to and rings the doorbell that first day. And it’s yellow, too!
We had driven past this house the other day on Bus 25 when we went to the zoo, but I had no idea I should have been paying attention to see the Front of the House.
We went the back way for sure. There was even snow in the yards, we were so high in the mountains. We drove by the International Headquarters of Red Bull. It was a lot bigger than this, but most of the buildings looked like this or glass and high-tech.
The bus drove on and on and on, and they put in the SOM soundtrack. It was fun to have a bus full of strangers singing “Do, a deer, a female deer!” Then, the driver said we were going to stop and stretch our legs and they would open the bar. (The bus had a bar?) We stopped at a gorgeous overlook of a lake. Wow.
The “bar” turned out to be a cooler full of beers and sodas. (By the way, they don’t call it “soda” here. They are “limonade.” So Coke is a type of “limonade.”) Libby and I decided to try an Austrian soda which was sort of like fizzy apple juice.
Soon, we reached Mondsee, which was the town where the church used to film the Captain and Maria’s wedding was located. The REAL Captain and Maria got married in Salzburg at Maria’s old abbey, but this church was prettier, I guess. And it was a lovely Catholic church!
Here’s a picture from the movie.
It’s the same place!
We were given about an hour to tour the town of Mondsee. It was a quaint, little place on Mondsee Lake (which means “moon lake”). I think it had the most colorful downtown I’ve ever seen.
With some nice cars.
Libby and I decided to have tea at the local bakery.
I had a raspberry sort of fluffy cheesecake and Libby’s was a chocolate and mandarin orange yummy.
After tea, we went down to the lake and got some gorgeous pictures. I’m posting most of them, simply because I can’t decide which ones I thought were best!
Too soon, it was time to get back on the bus. Instead of taking us up winding back roads to show us beautiful country, we just hopped on the Autobahn for a quick return to Linz. During this time, the tour guide told us how Maria von Trapp died. She loved cheese. When she was older, she didn’t want to eat anything else but cheese. And her stomach sort of folded in on itself and rotted, and she died of gangrene. How very interesting.
When we returned to Linz, we were instructed to go on our own to Mirabell Gardens where the Do, Re, Me song was sung. The Pegasus fountain was here, and that big tunnel of plants they run through.
Here’s a link to the song. See if you recognize the sights! http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xIjobdArtiA (skip ahead to about 3:57 to see the Mirabell Gardens part, the bride is the Mozart Bridge over the Salzach River)
It was a great deal of fun to go off on a tour with Libby, to see some beautiful places in Austria, and to learn a little bit more about a famous movie. Does it rank up there with raindrops on roses and whiskers on kittens? You betcha.