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Published: October 27th 2007
The youth hostel
As you can see, it's fairly large!I know it’s taken a while, but I’ve finally found a moment or two, amidst getting settled into my housing in Freiburg and starting uni to get back to my blog...So without further ado...
I was unsure what to expect of my second Youth Hostel experience as I made my way 2 hours south of Munich to Salzburg, Austria, having had such an unusual experience the first time. However, as Veronika (oldest of the Schäfer ‘kids’, although none of them are really kids anymore...) and I pulled up in front of the HUGE building that we assumed to be the hostel, I knew it was going to be A LOT different. Then when I went up to the reception and so the sign that said
Sound of Music movie shown daily at 8pm
I knew I was in the right place. 😊 For that was one of the main reasons I decided to take the offer of the lift with Veronika to Salzburg - to go on one of the famed
Original Sound of Music Tours
. Cheesy and touristy, I know, but it’s one of my favourite movies, and I wasn’t going to miss out on this once in a lifetime opportunity to
follow in the footsteps of Maria von Trapp!
:P
Although it was thoroughly tempting to come
Festung Hohensalzburg
I never visited this place so I'm not EXACTLY sure what it is, but I think it's a castle. It was actually really close to my youth hostel. back down to the reception area for the daily viewing, after checking my bags in and making my bed I was overcome with tiredness (even though all I’d done that day was pack and then sit in a car...it’s strange what your body decides is too much effort sometimes!), so I decided to make it an early one...plus I wanted to be rested for my big day the next day - tour day! :P
However, I was a little naive about how much sleep you can get in an 8-bed dorm in a youth hostel! As there was no curfew at this youth hostel, people came in at all different hours. Then even at about 1am, when the last person came in, and I thought I could finally get some good sleep, one of the girls in the dorm began...well, I would say snoring, but it was a little bit more like moaning...that’s right...moaning. So the last few hours left before I was to get up were spent sort of dozing when my ears could block out the constant
hmmmmhmmm
coming from the other end of the room. I think the poor girl had a cold, as she woke up
One of the many mountains surrounding Salzburg
I thought the fog/cloud that was present during my whole visit just added to the experience rather than being annoying! coughing a few times, however, when my sleep is interrupted (or prevented in this case!) I have very little room for sympathy! I was almost glad when my alarm went off at 7am and I left the dorm, despite the lack of sleep!
Fortunately a typical German buffet breakfast of bread rolls and all the types of toppings you could think of quickly changed my mood and I began looking forward to my tour again!
And I wasn’t disappointed! Although a little tired from the previous almost sleepless night, and despite the threatening rain, I really enjoyed taking in the sights of Austria, and especially visiting the places where the Hollywood version of
The Sound of Music
was filmed. We were taken around Salzburg in a coach bus for about 4 hours, shown the sights, told little snippets of information about the real von Trapp family and also the film version, and even had the chance to sing along to the soundtrack played through the bus loud speakers! Yes, extremely
kitsch
as the Germans also like to say, but still very enjoyable. And everyone sang along! :P I think my favourite thing about it, though, was learning about the real von Trapp family.
The Hollywood movie wasn’t too far off the mark in some aspects, but of course real-life stories don’t have enough drama, so a few extra conflicts were added! :P Of course we weren’t actually allowed in any of the buildings, as they are almost all actually private property, which did put a little bit of a damper on things, but it was still great to see them first hand. And even the drives between locations was amazing!
That afternoon I had planned to look around the city a bit, but the rain that was ‘threatening’ earlier actually came, and I only had one pair of shoes, so when they got wet I decided it was best to go back to the hostel and stay there til my shoes dried! :P
That evening I went to a German theatre production of Arthur Miller’s
Death of a Salesman
. It was really quite good. I understood probably 95%!o(MISSING)f it, and the actors were extremely talented. Those of you who have read it will also be aware of the difficulty of staging the play, with all the different rooms of the house needing to be visible at the same time, and thus the need for ‘invisible
walls’. The way they organised the stage for this performance was quite interesting - they joined lots of strands of elastic vertically to blocks of wood and then used these as the ‘walls’ between the different rooms. It’s a little difficult to explain in writing, but the point is, it allowed the audience to be able to see through the ‘walls’ into each room and also meant the actors could enter between the strands where the ‘doors’ were. I hope that makes sense! I thought it was very intriguing, as I had never seen a performance of this play before, and while reading it I often wondered about how you would go about creating such a set. Needless to say, I felt a lot more cultured that night, having been to see a classic play, in a foreign language, in Salzburg, Mozart’s ‘home’! :P
Next day, after struggling through another night full of moaning, I decided to make my way back to one of the places we had visited the previous day during the tour. The gazebo in which Liesl and Rolf dance in the movie is actually now situated on the grounds of a castle called
Schloss Hellbrunn
. This is
Mirabell garden
This is where Maria and the kids come whilst singing 'Do a deer'. It's actually a really beautiful garden! Lots of Japanese tourists, though... also the location of the ‘trick water fountains’. The king (who’s name I unfortunately can’t remember) who lived in Schloss Hellbrunn heard about some fountains that were installed by a king in France to trick his guests, so he did the same and created a whole garden with hidden fountains located in various locations amongst statues and even along the path in the garden itself, that would squirt water at the flick of a switch, so that he could have a good laugh - at the expense of his guests! I gave in and paid for a tour and it ended up actually being quite fun. The tour guide was of course the master of the switches. It was a really cold day and I was wearing shorts as my jeans were still drying from the previous day, so I really tried to avoid getting wet as much as possible. Unfortunately it was not really possible as they were actually all really well hidden, and even after having seen what they look like, I wasn’t always able to spot them before getting squirted!
The most classic was actually at the start of the tour - there was what looked like
a relatively normal outdoor table and chairs made of stone, and the tour guide asked for a few people to join him at the table. I had actually seen in a photo what happened here, so I didn’t volunteer myself. But 2 people were brave enough, and after they were sitting a while, the tour guide talking a bit, water began to squirt up around them and even through a hole in the middle of the chairs! But of course the head of the table, where the tour guide sat, was dry - of course the king’s place! I’ve tried to include a video that I took with my digital camera, but I’m not sure how good the quality is, and there is no sound. I hope most of you can see it!
That afternoon I did actually take a look around the city and even ended up doing some shopping - mostly just so I could say
and these are the jeans I bought in Salzburg
when I get back home! :D The amazing thing I find about the city centre of Salzburg is the feeling you get that you are tiny...The buildings start right on the edge of a mountain, and some are even built onto
The back of the house used as the von Trapp house in the Hollywood movie
Interestingly enough the front of the house and the back of the house are two different buildings, and the inside was actually all filmed in a studio! The lake in this picture is also the lake where the kids and Maria fall out of the boats. the side of the mountain, parking is actually IN the mountain, and those that aren’t near the mountain are usually quite tall, and in most places the walkway between buildings is only about 10 metres wide! It is such a beautiful place, and I found it so different to Germany!
I enjoyed it so much that, although I was meant to go back to the Schäfers’ that day, I decided I would instead go to where Veronika was staying with her grandparents, about 20minutes inside the German border from Salzburg, and spend one more night in the area before heading back with her the next day. I had read in my trusty little guide book (thanks Rivo girls! :P) about the Königsee, a lake quite close to Salzburg, which was apparently extremely beautiful, that I thought would be nice to see.
I planned to find my way there with public transport the next day, but then Veronika’s grandfather very kindly offered to drive me! Although we were a little doubtful about the weather when we left, when we got to the lake it had cleared up and it was just as beautiful as my guide book said! I really wanted
Mondsee
This is the lake near the church setting in which Maria and Georg got married in the movie to take a boat trip across the lake, to a famous church called
St. Batholemä
and back, but unfortunately we got there just after the last one left. I’m sure it would have been expensive anyways, though, as the trip lasts about 1 ½ hours. We walked around the bottom of the lake, though, until we reached a point where we could (barely ) see the church across the lake. It was amazing, although quite distant!
Then Veronika’s grandfather even drove me a little way up one of the mountains that make up the Bavarian alps. Also extremely beautiful. It was just the beginning of autumn (Fall for all you Americans :P), so all the trees were coloured red, orange, yellow and brown. It was great. I don’t think we really experience colours like that in autumn in Australia.
By the time we made our way back to Gerolsbach, I was beginning to wonder whether I had made the right decision in choosing to study in Freiburg or whether I should have chosen to study in Austria...up until that point Salzburg seemed a little more appealing than what I’d seen of Germany. However, having been in Freiburg for almost a month
Basilika Mondsee
The church in which Maria and Georg were married now, I can say that I think I did make the right decision! But more on Freiburg next time...
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Sarah Morey
non-member comment
OK I was kind of already jealous, now I hate your guts. I love that movie... as in I have the 35th anniversary DVD and CD, and went to teh SIng-a-long when it came to Perth, dressed as a brown paper package tied up with string. I think I'm going to go cry now.