Austria!

Hallo, friends.

Once again I’m sitting in a corner here in my hostel in Salzburg, Austria, ready to share with you my adventures from yesterday. Unfortunately, I’m also upset because my card reader and 32 GB memory card appear to have been stolen. I think I left it plugged into one of the hostel computers last night and by the time I realized it this morning, it was gone. Of all the things that could have been stolen from me, I guess this isn’t that bad.

Anyway, on a lighter note (pun intended), the Sound of Music tour yesterday was a blast! It was very hokey, complete with tour guides dressed in lederhosen, a brightly colored tour bus, and yodeling. We visited a bunch of places in Salzburg and the surrounding area that were used to film the Sound of Music movie. We learned all kinds of fun facts and sang along to the soundtrack in the bus. It was pretty great.

Our first stop was at the Leopoldskron Palace, a beautiful huge mansion of a building set up right next to a large man-made lake the locals ice skate on during the winter. The movie crew used this location for all the backyard scenes and the scene where Maria and the children all fall out of a canoe while waving to the captain. If you watch the movie, you’ll notice that the scenes that show the backyard never show the house. That’s because the exteriors of the house were filmed elsewhere, at the old Trapp family house in Salzburg. That’s the one you see when Maria is singing the “Confidence” song and running through the gates to the house and pressing the doorbell. You also see it in the background of Maria’s shots during the argument scene with her and the captain after he discovers his children have been wearing clothes made from old drapes. His shots were filmed at Leopoldskron Palace and hers were filmed at the old Trapp house. It looks like they’re talking back and forth in the same place, but they’re not. Tricky tricky.

Next, we drove a few kilometers away to check out the famous gazebo that’s in the “16 Going On 17” scene and the kissing scene with Maria and Captain Von Trapp.

Then we made our way out of Salzburg, and passed Nonnberg Abbey, where the real-life Maria was preparing to be a nun and where Maria and Captain Von Trapp were married in real life.

On our way through the mountains and lakes region outside of Salzburg, we pulled off the road to take a look at Lake Wolfgangsee, a crystal blue glacial lake with five towns on its shores.

Next, we arrived in the charming little town of Mondsee, Austria. The wedding scene from the Sound of Music was filmed in this town in St. Michael’s Basilica. It was really cool!

After I finished exploring the church, I wandered over to a cute little cafe and ordered warm apple strudel with vanilla sauce. Mmm mmm. It was delicious. It’s a good thing I’m doing a lot of walking on this trip!

After we’d finished looking around Mondsee, the tour group piled back into the bus and we headed back to Salzburg. We sang along to the soundtrack and then watched some of the movie. When we got back to Salzburg, our tour guide showed us around Mirabell Gardens where much of the “Do Re Mi” song was filmed. I got to see the Pegasus fountain that Maria and the children walk around, the stairs they all hop on in time of the song, the cool vine trellis thing they run through, and other cool places. I’m sad I lost some of these pictures. One nice couple took pictures of me hopping up the stairs like Maria and the children did. All in all, it was a pretty fun tour 🙂

Later that evening, I met up with a friend I had met in my hostel in Munich. We found this cool German restaurant called Restaurant Stieglkeller. I ordered two glasses of delicious red wine along with pork roast with dumpling and coleslaw. It was quite good, though I didn’t care for the coleslaw much. We checked out another German bar which was pretty cool and then I headed back to my hostel and had my best night’s sleep since I arrived in Europe.

Well, that’s all for now. I’m hoping my memory card shows up somewhere, but I’m not that hopeful. I left my email address with the front desk guy at the hostel just in case it does turn up. If it doesn’t, it’s not the end of the world. My photos just won’t be as good a quality from now on. There are worse things, I suppose. Anyway, I’m off to go explore the Salzburg fortress and take a cable car to the top of Untensberg Mountain! That’s where the Von Trapp family hiked to escape from the Nazis in the movie. Which geographically makes no sense as Untensberg is in Austria… and they were going to Switzerland. But that’s Hollywood for you 🙂

Tschus for now!