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The Sound of Music Tour

Today’s adventure was one that Kel had been excited about for at least a week. Yesterday we booked a spot on the morning Sound of Music tour which was supposed to take us to all of the important SOM sights in Salzburg and the surrounding area.

Early Morning Best be Worth It

As many of you probably understand, I was extremely skeptical of the experience we were getting ready to embark on. There were a couple of things that this tour had against it in my mind before we even started. First, the tour started first thing in the morning which meant that I had to be up before the sun came up here. While I know many of you will not sympathize with me on this point because you get up early for work every day; I have not had to get up early in at least two months which means that early is more challenging because my sleeping rhythms have changed over time. Secondly, I have enjoyed traveling at our own pace and was not looking forward to being herded like cows from stop to stop. Tours are often very constricting. The third and final point which may make many of the women reading this cringe, I’m not a huge SOM fan.

After a very early morning breakfast we waited out front of our hotel for the bus to pick us up. Precisely at 9:15 the bus arrived and we set off to first pick up a few other tourists and then set off on the tour.

The tour is given solely in English because the SOM is a purely English speaking world phenomenon. From what I understand the Germans and Austrians couldn’t give a poop about the Sound of Music or the important sites around the area.

The first major site we got t see was the back of the von Trapp mansion with the lake that the kids and Maria fell into in the movie. Due to a little movie magic the front of the mansion is actually another site. The building is now, strangely enough, owned by Harvard and is used for international studies. The building and lake look just like the movie with the exception of the fact that the lake was pretty much frozen solid.

From there we headed to the gazebo used for a couple of scenes in the movie (Remember Liesel and Rolf singing “I am 16 going on 17 . . .”). The gazebo used to be behind the mansion we had just visited but when Harvard bought and started using the mansion, the gazebo was moved so that people could see it without disturbing the academics.

The gazebo appears smaller than the one in the movie once again do to Hollywood movie magic. The real gazebo is smaller inside because the bench jumping scenes in the movie were actually filmed on sets in Hollywood. The gazebo is now permanently locked because some stupid tourist a few years ago was jumping the benches like the scenes in the movie and fell and broke her hip. Tone of our fellow tour members took a cute picture of us kissing in front of the gazebo which got a chorus of “Awww” from many of the other tour goers. We are Soooo cute!!! (cue my sarcastic/funny voice.)

From there we headed to the town where the church was that was used for the marriage scene in the movie. Here we got lunch and got a chance to mingle with other tour goers. In my opinion the other people on the tour made the tour completely worth it. The few number of sights and high cost would be worthless (Kel disagrees) if we hadn’t had the chance to meet the people we met.

While at lunch we met two couples: one from Texas and the other a couple who were working currently in London but were from the states. We, as usual, got a chorus of Oooos and Ahhs from the couples when we told them about our trip and then managed to get some advice on places to see. The couple from London were living abroad in order to do what we are doing in a year via weekend trips. Because of the fewer number of trips they get to take they will have spent 3 years in London just to see as much of Europe as we will have at the end of our year. It really affirmed our decision to do what we are doing because we wouldn’t have wanted to move away for that long just so we could see the world.

After lunch we went and saw the church which was unfortunately under construction. We then headed back to the bus in order to head back to Salzburg. On the bus we got into a conversation with a family from Sydney who was really fun. The Cohen family is traveling Europe for eight weeks in order to see Europe and meet up with their oldest son Mark who’s working in London. You’ll hear more about the Cohens in the next blog.

One more interesting insight from the tour, as we were traveling through one of the small town in the lake district south of Salzburg we passed the international headquarters of Red Bull energy drink. We had no idea that Red Bull was originally from Austria which just points out how Amero-centric our thought processes can be. We had completely assumed Red Bull was from the states. Who knew??

A Lazy Afternoon

Once we returned from the tour we headed back to our hotel. Figuring that we would be out late because of New Years we decided to get some rest with the remaining afternoon hours. A few hours of nap when tired can really make a difference in one’s outlook when trying to stay up late to enjoy the festivities.

More in our next blog…Same Bat Time…Same Bat Channel

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