Salzburg and the Sound of Music!

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I guess I’m not really a big Sound of Music fan because I never realised that’s where they filmed the sound of music all those years ago until after I actually arrived in Salzburg.

In hindsight it all makes sense now…. its near the border of Austria and Germany… it has some spectacular scenery and if you go exploring out of town up in the hills like we did.. it does kinda make you want to sing a little… ( a bit of doe a deer a female deer, never really hurt anyone did it? Haha).

That and everyone kept sending me darn messages on facebook to do the bloody ‘sound of music tour’…. Well I hate to disappoint you all, but I didn’t, sorry it’s just not my thing. Luckily for Jono and I, Jules had been to Salzburg before and already done the tour… lucky hey!

And for any of you ‘nay sayers’ out there who say it’s a once in a lifetime chance… its not.. I’ll go back to Salzburg again one day.. it was beautiful. Ok so I’ve got all that sound of music stuff off my chest now so we can move on!

So after leaving Munich and Oktoberfest, arriving in Salzburg was a real pleasure. A great chance to unwind and relax little plus let the JJ’s settle into their European adventure. In fact you should have seen the smile of Jono’s face the night we arrived and walked down the main street into ‘old town’… he was smiling from ear to ear the whole way.. I guess I was too, but on the inside. I’ve seen a fair bit this year now, after a while you forget and get into a bit of a same same scenario.. but watching Jono explore the old cobble stone lined streets and 500 year of buildings made me realize it really was fantastic and I started looking a little closer too.

Originally we booked into a hostel for 2 nights and ended up staying for another two making it four in total. It was just so relaxing and peaceful that we kept putting off our departure, in fact the only reason we left in the end was that the hostel was fully booked... Also it was a good chance for me to find a few nice cafe’s with wifi and try to catch up on a bit of work which the JJ’s didn’t mind as they had plenty of exploring to do around Salzburg.

Also whilst we were there Jono got a hot tip from someone he new back in Melbourne about this fancy hotel on a lake just out of town that was mean to me gorgeous .. and as I’ve said before, these are always gold. If you trust the person and value their judgement you’ve simply gotta go a see whatever it is they are suggesting. We did and wowsa! It was amazing.

So unbeknown to us whilst we were having a quick nana nap one day, Jono booked us all a room on the side of the lake (Lake Fulsch or Fulshee as we came to call it) for the next night. So the next morning we packed up our packs, wondered down to the local bus station and caught a 45 min bus out to this lake.

It really was amazing and the tourist season was over so it felt like we had to the little town all to ourselves. So much so that we only saw about 10 other people during the whole 24hrs we were in town. In fact and I know I said I was done with the ‘Sounds of Music’ movie but the opening scenes up in the hills was filmed out at Fulshee so we kinda had our own little private tour in the end!!

Our time there pretty much consisted of a long walk around the lake (about 8km) to this fancy hotel we had heard about and lovely bottle of wine on the jetty at sunset afterwards, picky lunch and all!.

The hotel was certainly very nice and it didn’t disappoint. In fact, I’m pretty sure it had the best view of the entire area and the lake. We were too scared to ask what it cost to stay there after buying a small bottle of water for five Euros. And the bottle of wine that evening felt even more special enjoying in such a beautiful setting with the JJ’s. In fact Jules even tried a bit which was unusual as she’s not a red drinker.

So after an early night to bed that night because of the lack of action in town we managed to have a reasonably early start the next day, back to Salzburg. We timed our arrival just in time for the morning train to Prague in the Czech Republic but couldn’t actually get on the train since we hadn’t pre booked our tickets. So we simply killed a few hours in Salzburg and waited for the next train as travellers do who don’t really have a fixed plan..

Oh and forgot to mention.. the weather in both Salzburg and Fulshee, was surprisingly good and sunny for the five days we were there. We had a few light showers in the afternoon, but considering the time of year we were very lucky. But something tells me, heading 6 hours north up to Prague will change all that…

But you’ll have to wait and see for the next update to find out about all that!

TD

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Comments

[Marléne Esterhuizen]

Sound of Music!!
So many thanks for this interesting website about your visit to Salzburg! Living in South Africa I am a big fan of TSOM movie since I saw it the first time here in 1967! I was so happy to be able to visit Salzburg in August 2007!! Since then I can't read enough about what other people experienced while being there and (even maybe on the same SOM tour - Panorama) shairing their photo's. Thank you for not letting me think I am the only one that loves that movie. Although Julie Andrews made a lot other movies this one is the best ever.