If you climbed this mountain outside of Salzburg, you went to Germany
The Sound of Music tour was a four-hour ride through Salzburg and the Austrian countryside, remembering and seeing the sites from the 1965 best picture film.
As described here, I took the tour on the insistence of family and friends and had a lovely time.
The scenery was spectacular and the stories fun.
For example, the photo on top is of the film mountain the vonTrapp family climbed to escape Austria to Switzerland.
Unfortunately, if you climb the Untersburg, as the family did in the film, you end up not only in Germany, but in Berchtesgarten–Hitler‘s alpine hideaway.
In reality, the family caught a train to Italy and from there went to America.
In 1938.
But that doesn’t take away from the fun–movies are not real life.
The modern trip
Lake Fuschl
The tour out of town provided spectacular scenery, even on a cloudy day.
We drove an hour to Monsee, the site of the church where George and Maria married in the film.
A baroque church with all the usual excesses, it seemed bigger in the film–probably because of that shot of Maria’s long train following her down the aisle to the altar.
We had 90 minutes in Monsee and I used the time to admire the church and then wandered into a tourist shop–as I was expected to do while on the tour.
I was hunting a music box that played “Mozart‘s Twinkle, Twinkle, Little Star,” for my astronomer son.
“Mozart didn’t write that,” the shop owner said. “There’s no proof of it, so we don’t have one.”
He didn’t sell me anything.
Too rich to finish!
Our tour guide insisted we try the traditional apple strudel with thick cream sold at the shop across from the church.
Pure decadence!
The DVD player in the bus played The Sound of Music all the way back to Salzburg where we finished the tour in the Mirabel Gardens.
We all recognized the gardens at once and were humming: “Doe, a deer, a female deer.”
You’ll know them, too:
The Do-Re-Mi steps–up and down in Mirabel Gardens with Julie hitting the high note at the end
My astronomer and I singing and jumping up and down the steps!
Don’t you want to race?
Music is in the air in Salzburg and you’d be singing, too!
Tweetables
Scenery and gluttony: Sound of Music Tour Click to Tweet
Familiar sites on the Sound of Music Tour Click to Tweet
Why take a Sound of Music tour? Stories and scenery. Click to Tweet
Cool. Was part of the interest the fact that Captain von Trapp was a U-boat commander in WW1?
Of course! And the fact he lived in Trieste prior to WWI (we drove up from there) and his first wife was the daughter of the man who invented the torpedo! 🙂