THE SOUNDS OF MUSIC

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Some Musing

Salzburg is a postcard city, that is the old section of Salzburg is picture perfect. The outskirts are just like any other city no cleaner, no dirtier. Salzburg is also very old, it is home of the oldest restaurant in Europe, we will be there tomorrow and older than Paris. It was an independent city state until the early 19^th century. It was originally ruled by Arch Bishop’s and the architecture is very mixed, in fact according to Jerry It is pretty plain and not as detail oriented as Paris, Rome, and other cities. One thing Salzburg is more than any other city I have ever been to, is all about music. It’s the birthplace of Mozart, Haydn lived here, and of course the Sound of Music is all about Salzburg. If nothing else the two things that truly dominate the city are Mozart and The Sound of Music.

The nice thing about this City is that everything you want to see is walking distance. Our hotel is very centrally located next to the Mirabel gardens and just a few blocks from the old city. The name of our hotel is Am Mirabellplatz. I highly recommend it. It is reasonable and near everything. Don’t bother with the inclusive breakfast safe some Euros and just get the room without the breakfast, you can better spend your 15 Euros elsewhere.

Speaking of money, Austria is considerably more expensive than Paris, yes, you read correctly. Hotels are more, food is more, and wine is more. Not that you cannot find a good deal, you just have to pay attention a bit more.

The people on the other hand are very friendly, and while there is a lot of German being spoken, almost everyone speaks English and is happy to converse with you in either. German is a very difficult language and Ms Hawes my high school German teach would be very disappointed in me, my 2 ½ years of German have not helped up much. Maybe by the end of our time in Berlin, it will be better, but for now, my French is better than my German and that isn’t saying much.

My final random thought is about the weather. When you think of Austria what is the first thing you think about? Well for me it was cold and snow. Jerry and I fully expected it to be very cold here, even in April. What we have found is that this April, it is very warm, in fact, I was in sunglasses all day, and I got sunburn. Like I thought to bring sun screen to Austria! Our tour guide (more about that in a moment) said that April can be very strange, sometimes it can be snowing and bitter cold until May, other times it can be like it was today (28 Celsius, you have to convert yourself, but it was warm). I think it is just another sign of global warming, so you can’t tell me it doesn’t exist. We have been too many places where the weather is not what it should be.

And now on to today’s activities.

The Sound of Music Tour

We have not done something this touristy since our trip to London 10 years ago when we did the Jack the Ripper Walking Tour. But I could not possibly come to Salzburg and not do 2 things 1) soak up as much Mozart as possible (begins tomorrow) and two see where Julie Andrews and the Children played. While we already knew that the movie is not very true to life, I didn’t realize that the German’s in fact had made a previous movie called The Von Trapp Family Singer or something along that line. It was more of a documentary style and the Austrian’s feel in love with it. They did not fall in love with The Sound of Music; in fact many of them have never seen or heard of it. The version we all grew up with, while based upon the Von Trapps, has very little truth to it, well they did win the Salzburg Festival and they did leave Austria to escape the Nazi’s, but they didn’t walk over the hills, they took a train to Italy and got on a boat. In fact, they couldn’t possibly walk over the hills to Switzerland since on the other side of the hills is Germany and Switzerland is 500 km in the other direction.

The Tour

There are several tour companies that do a Sound of Music Tour, we went on the one done by Panorama Tour Company, if I am correct they were the first to do the tours and have been doing them since 1965. Maria Von Trapp herself has been on the tour.

The tour started 2 blocks from our hotel. We boarded a bus and were off. The guide, who was American born in Austria (mother Austrian father Military), knew far too much about the Sound of Music, but then it is his job. He was very nice and a very good guide. He had an incredible sense of humor, but told very bad jokes. He could also insult someone without them even knowing it. For those of you who are familiar with the Chevy Chase movie series about vacations, there was one family he kept referring to as the Griswold’s, they did not get the joke. However, any couple who travel with 4 girls all under the age of 13, well they can be the butt of a joke or too. Speaking of those on the tour, the couple behind us had too much money. They were in Salzburg to get married, staying in some old palace and were not pleased that children were on (and this is her words not mine) “an adult tour, I mean I was expecting old people but not kids, I didn’t sign up for this” Again her words not mine. My first thought was great aren’t you the shining example of the ugly American, but to my pleasure they were in fact ugly Canadians.

Before I go on with the tour, I will say that it is not for everyone, you have to really like the movie and I mean really like it. If you don’t then there is no point for you to take this tour. I personally love the movie, saw it in the theatre when it first came out, own the movie, my two younger sisters were in the musical in high school, I watch the movie every year at Christmas. Let’s say, it would be like not seeing the Wiz, or Wicked if you like the Wizard of Oz.

The tour itself was about 4 hours long. Much of it was in fact outside of Salzburg. The only scenes that were really filmed in the city were the scenes when the children were learning to sing. Much of that took place in the Mirrabellgartens and the streets of Salzburg. The rest of the movie was done outside Salzburg, not at the original home of the Van Trapps (which by the way is now a bread and breakfast owned by one of the Porsche, yes the car, kids). I won’t go into a great deal of the details, but we did see some beautiful lakes and parts of Austria that we wouldn’t have seen if we had not taken the tour. The church of the wedding scene is not the Abby, which does exist and we will see tomorrow, but was done in a small church about 30 minutes outside of Salzburg.

Later in the trip we will be going to Untersberg Mt., which is where the opening scene of the move was shot, by the way it would not have been possible for Maria to run down the hill back to the Abby, unless she was on a rocket, It is about 20 km outside of the city.

When we returned to the city we walked through the Mirabellgarten and took some very appropriate pictures (based on the tour we had just been on) See how many you can recognize from the movie. After the gardens we headed across the Salzach river to Monchsberg Terrace. This is up on a cliff that overlooks the city. Fortunately there is an elevator so you don’t have to walk up; the walk down while not easy is certainly doable. At the top is the Museum of Modern Art, we skipped this. From the top we strolled down the hill to the Festspielhauser (the auditorium where the Salzburg Festival is held and the Festival Competition from the movie was in fact filmed. It was not open when we got there, and we hope to get a tour tomorrow.

From there we strolled through the old town on our way back to the hotel. We had an early dinner reservation as it was part of a dinner/concert package.

The Return of Wine-thirty

In case you thought we no longer par took of this tradition, rest assured it came back with a vengeance today. We walked a great deal today and by 3:00 my feet were ready for wine-thirty. We made our way back to the wine shop we had purchased wine from last night and had a nice cold bottle of Austrian Sauvignon Blanc. We sat outside and watched the crowd go by. Several locals were also having their afternoon wine and the platz (square) was quite crowded.

From there we returned to the hotel (slightly buzzed since we really hadn’t eaten all day) and got ready for dinner and our piano concert.

Dinner & Piano Concert

One thing about Salzburg is that there is music everywhere. There are several concerts every night, concerts in churches, concert in palaces, pretty much every were you turn; there is music to be heard. While we are here we are doing to dinner concert packages. The first, tonight’s, is dinner at the Spielbrau and piano concert in the Marble hall of Schloss Mirabell (Schloss Mirabell’s Marmosaal). Tonight’s music will be a piano recital of Beethoven music.

Since we were going to a recital we thought it an appropriate to dress for the occasion, so out came the blue suit and for Jerry is jacket and shirt he had made in Thailand. We were over dressed for dinner but not for the recital. Both dinner and the recital were within 4 blocks of the hotel, which was a good thing, since it was still pretty warm out. We found the Speilbrau with no problem and were seated inside at a window table overlooking the outside terrace. A large group of German tourists were dinning on the terrace. Later a large group of Japanese tourist were at tables in the area we were at. The combination of German and Japanese langagues was too much for my brain to handle.

Dinner was simple but good. We started with a salad with a bit of country aspic and a pickled relish. Next was a creamy potato and mushroom soup, (soup is a big thing here) it was very good and had a spice that we could not identify, but was very good. Our entrée was a roasted pork loin in a nice pepper sauce. The entrée was accompanied by perfect cooked green beans with bacon and potato croquettes (i.e. crispy hash browns). We failed to take pictures except of the bottle of wine. We were a bit tired from the activities of the day; world travel does tend to catch up with you on about the 10 day. Dessert was a chocolate mousse. Much different than a French chocolate mousse, much lighter and airy, French mousse tends to be much more dense.

After dinner we walked to the concert hall. It was, as previously mentioned, inside the Mirabell palace in the marble hall. It was a small venue with a very old baby grand piano in the front center of the room. There was seating for about 60 and it was 2/3rds of capacity. If it wasn’t for the marble, we would have all melted. It was very warm and the body heat just increased the temperature even more. They didn’t open the windows for acoustic reasons, but I think it would have been just fine. The music was wonderful and relaxing, I didn’t fall asleep but two other people in the front row did. The concert lasted about 90 minutes with several small breaks. The pianist was very uncomfortable you could tell he was hot and the sweat was beading on his forehead. I think us all lost 5 pounds from sweating.

After the concert we returned to the room, it was 10, I did a bit of blogging and by 11 we were both sound asleep.

This blog was started last night and finished this morning (April 27). We are just about ready to head out for today’s sights.

Today’s Food

Breakfast – coffee

Lunch – apple strudel next to the church that was the site of the wedding scene in The Sound of Music

Dinner – Creamy potato mushroom soup, roasted pork loin, chocolate mousse.

Wine - Rohtwien (red wine) from Burguland. (a region of Austria)

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Photos

Moutain of the picnic scene
The Hills are alive, with the sound of music

Lake
Row boat secene

One of two palaces used for the moving

16 going on 17
or somewhere in my childhood I must have done something good.

Not the Abbey
Wedding Scene

Mirabell
Outside of marble hall

Comments

[Shari]

Thanks
Thanks for checking out that grand piano for me. I completely understand that it doesn't fit in your luggage, so you're forgiven. I'll bet is sounded 1000 times better than the baby grand I played at church today. Glad to hear you two are having such a great time.