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Published: October 18th 2006
St. Gilgen, Austria
This is Gretchen and I at St. Gilgen, Austria. This was on the "The Sound of Music" tour. From your perspective, that big peak just above my head and to the left is apparently where Maria was singing at the beginning of the movie.First off, let me just give a quick clarification here in case you missed the last post. All of the pictures that we post on this blog have captions with them—even the ones at the bottom, below the text of the blog. If the captions do not automatically appear, just (double?) click on the pictures, and the picture will become enlarged and the caption will appear. Okay, enough of that…
I tried to get Gretchen to type up this blog, but she didn’t want to. I figured she would be able to put more of a positive spin on our “The Sound of Music” tour around Salzburg, Austria, but since she won’t write this one, I guess I’ll just have to joke about it when I get to that point. (Actually, the tour itself was pretty neat—but our tour
Somewhere in Austria...I think
I woke up twice on the plane ride from London to Salzburg. The second time I woke up this is what I saw outside the window. Gretchen and I were surprised not to see mountains, but we saw plenty of them that day. guide was a bit wacky.) At any rate, we’re currently on a train from Milan, Italy to Venice. We just left Milano Centrale station. But before I get too far ahead of myself, let me back up.
As I mentioned in the last blog entry, I had my first final exam (for my British Legal System class) last Thursday evening. The exam was scheduled for the next day, Friday the 13th, but I worked out a deal with our program director to let me take it a day early because Gretchen and I had already purchased our tickets to fly to Salzburg. I know that sounds irresponsible of me, but the academic calendar that we received last summer said that that particular class would be over on Friday, 6 October—there was no indication that the exam would be the following week. So at any rate, I got to take my exam a day early. The exam was pretty simple—there were five essay questions, and we had to choose two to answer—open book.
At 3:45 AM on Friday morning a taxi picked us up at our flat in London and took us to the Liverpool Street Station; from there
The Salzach River
This river runs right through Salzburg. The water throughout the Alps is kind of a greenish color. The canals in Venice were a similar color, but not quite so distinctive. It's a beautiful contrast to the "chocolatey" brown water of the River Thames in London. we took an express train up to Stansted Airport and caught a 6:45 AM flight to Salzburg. This airport experience was much better than the last one—the main difference was there was no Attila this time. Within the last couple of weeks Britain has loosened up its carry-on luggage restrictions, so that helped. I was asleep for virtually the whole flight and I can only assume that most everybody else was doing the same thing. I woke up once to change positions, and the second time I woke up I saw that we were about to land. As we approached Salzburg (home of Mozart!), Gretchen and I were both shocked to not see any mountains. However, once we landed and got to look in other directions, there were plenty of mountains. After being at BYU for a while, I guess I just took the mountains for granted, but when we saw the huge Alps in Salzburg, I realized how much I miss mountains. I mentioned in the last blog that we went horseback riding in the mountains in Wales—well, the Welsh mountains were not “real” mountains—they were kind of like the North Georgia mountains—bigger than hills, but small compared to
Hohensaltzburg
This is the fortress in Salzburg. It is high above the city and can be seen from virtaully anywhere in town. It's pretty impressive. the Rockies or the Alps.
We got to Salzburg at about 10AM, so we basically had the whole day ahead of us to explore Salzburg. (Coincidentally, when we arrived at our hotel in Austria, Governor Schwarzenegger—of all people—was on the front page of the USA Today International Edition.) When we checked in at the hotel, the concierge made reservations for us to go on a
The Sound of Music tour. The tour was a 4 hour bus tour that took us around various sites in Salzburg that were included in the movie. We saw the VonTrapp mansion, the “16 Going on 17” gazebo, and the Mirabell Gardens, where the Pegasus statue is and where some of the “Do-Re-Mi” scenes were filmed. Then we rode up into the mountains and saw some of the sites outside of Salzburg. We saw the village of St. Gilgen, where the opening credits were filmed, and then the yellow church where Captain VonTrapp and Maria were married. The area was beautiful! I have to admit that Gretchen was much more excited about the actual
The Sound of Music scenes than I was, but I definitely enjoyed the scenery at least as much as she
The VonTrapp Residence
This is my "smoking hot wife" standing along the lake which is behind the VonTrapp house from The Sound of Music. I think that's the same lake that the kids and Maria fell into (from the boat), but I'm not sure--our tour guide didn't like to speak in complete sentences, so I was never quite sure what she was saying. did. So, in my opinion, the positive part of the tour was the scenery—the lakes, valleys, and mountains in the Alps.
As Paul Harvey says,
now for the rest of the story… The tour was cool; the tour guide was a bit psycho. I think she must also give
Da Vinci Code tours because she kept randomly saying things like “Don’t worry—it’ll all make sense in end” and “The mysteries will all be unfolded by the end of the tour—I promise—so just stay with me for now.” I really have no idea what the “mysteries” were to which she was referring. I mean, this was the VonTrapps, not the Romanovs! To say the least, she was a little over the top. The other thing about her was that she liked to tell jokes. That in itself is not a fault by any means—but none of her jokes were the slightest bit funny. They were old jokes that she’s probably been telling for a dozen years. (For example, she was still telling jokes in which Tom Cruise played the role of “heart throb”—now
that’s dated!) One last complaint is that our tour guide didn’t talk in complete sentences. She is
The Gazebo
Now that I've seen the movie again, some of these things that we saw on the tour make sense. This is the gazebo from "16 Going on 17" and then where Captain VonTrapp and Maria have their first kiss. Awww.... from England, so she speaks fluent English as her first language—that wasn’t the issue. She just couldn’t speak in complete sentences. To give an example of her narration it would have been something like this: “Imagine…swans…the valley…children…song all around……
it will all make sense to you later.” Aaagghh!
At any rate, lest I give a false impression, I really did enjoy the tour—that is to say, I enjoyed seeing the sights because the area is just spectacular. And it was neat to learn a few bits of trivia about the filming of the movie. (Just a little tidbit—most Germans and Austrians are completely unfamiliar with
The Sound of Music. Even in Salzburg, most people have never seen the movie; they know the VonTrapp story, but the American movie never really made it to Austria. The first time it ever showed in Austria was on Christmas Day, 2000!) So I’m glad we went. I also have to mention that I think I was probably the only person on that tour that hadn’t seen
The Sound of Music at least a dozen times. (I have to confess that I had only seen the movie once before—maybe twice. That’s a pretty
Churches
Every little village that we saw throughout the Alps region had at least one church with a steeple like this. It was really cool. (I guess that's why they call them the Alps, eh, Bob?!? - sorry, inside joke.) One of the only things that we didn't like about Salzburg was that the city buses are electic and so there are wires hanging all over the place that ruin all of your photographs! sharp indictment for a Mormon! But my parents were good parents—I promise!) During parts of the tour the
The Sound of Music soundtrack was playing over the bus’ speakers. Apparently lots of the passengers thought it was a sing-along…so I did feel a bit like an “outsider” at times. I also should mention that I had a funny realization on this trip while some of the bus passengers were singing along to the “Do-Re-Mi” song. My dad,
Raymond Killingbeck, would change the words to “Doe—a deer, a female deer; Ray—a drop of golden sun; Me—a name I call myself” to “Doe—a deer, a female deer; Ray—
a name I call myself…” Funny, dad. I finally caught on after all of these years…
Knowing that we were going to see some of these sights in Salzburg, Gretchen brought her
The Sound of Music DVD in her luggage. So on Friday night after we got back to the Marriott, we watched the first hour or so of the movie. We finished watching the movie on Saturday morning on a train riding through the Alps en route to Milan. That was neat. However, we kept having to pause the movie to stop and
Another Lake
This is another picture of a hidden lake up in the mountains that we saw in the Austrian Alps. The mountains were huge and the scenery was just beautiful. Gretchen and I now would like to go back someday and take a vacation just through Austria and Switzerland. It's funny--two of the most beautiful places we have seen--rural Switzerland and Austria--were two places that were just "filler" days in our travel schedule. look at the amazing mountain views from the train! For hours and hours we just saw huge mountains. For a part of that train ride, we went up into Germany, so we got to cross over and ride alongside the Danube River frequently. It really is blue! It’s kind of a greenish-blue, but it is definitely a distinctive color that merits having a song named after it. I’m not sure if I was able to get a good picture of that. The total travel time by train from Salzburg to Milan was about 7 hours and 30 minutes, which sounds like a really long time, but it was great. We got to rest instead of walking around, plus we had breathtaking scenery and a laptop to watch movies and old episodes of
The Office. I tried to download last Thursday’s episode of
The Office while we were at the train station in Innsbruck, Austria, but we weren’t there long enough, and our train left about 2 minutes before I could finish the download, so I had to wait. I know…tragic story…you’re all in tears.
[Speaking of mountains and scenery, there are some pretty mountains right now in the distance
More Alps Scenery
My sister requested lots of pictures of the Alps, so here they are. This is another photo from our bus tour through the Alps around Salzburg. to the north of us on our train ride to Venice. On one of them, there appears to be a large church or monastery or something just on the side of it, high up, overlooking the valley. Gretchen and I have been joking lately that this trip is just our “primer” trip to Europe because we keep falling in love with these little cities that we end up in by mistake—for example, St. Gilgen, Austria and some of the rural Swiss cities that we saw a couple of weeks ago—and we want to come back and visit a lot of these places again. Seriously, we’d love to take another trip some day and just visit Austria and Switzerland for a week.]
Milan was pretty nice. We got there in the late afternoon/early evening. We walked around for a little bit that evening. It was Bob’s (Gretchen’s dad’s) 60th birthday, so we let him take us out to dinner. We decided to go for Italian. Shockingly, we couldn’t find an Olive Garden anywhere, so we had to settle for a local authentic Italian restaurant. OH MY GOSH—IT WAS GOOD! I’ve been teasing Gretchen’s mom about carrying around big bags of
Mountains
Hopefully the little town in front of the mountains will give you some perspective of how huge these mountains really are. They were significantly bigger than the mountains around BYU, which I think are really big. food on trips, but I’ll tell you what—if I could carry around some of this Italian food without it spoiling, I’d fill it up and bring it home with me! Today I had some fresh-roasted chestnuts that I bought from a guy on the side of the road, and even those were delicious. (Gretchen thought they were a bit dry…) I’ll stop at this point about the food, but I don’t think I can overstate how good it’s been. I’m glad we have a whole week here. The only problem is that I might have to buy an extra plane ticket for my ride home.
Today Gretchen and I walked around Milan a bit and explored. We bought a day pass for the Milan public transit system, and I’m pretty sure that we got our money’s worth! We went and saw the Castello Sforzesco, which is a castle (“castello” = “castle”) that our taxi driver yesterday said was over 1,000 years old. Then we went and saw the Duomo (“duomo” = “cathedral”), which is one of the really famous landmarks in Milan. The duomo is made out of light-colored (Italian) marble, and it is amazing on the outside. As
Green Space
In addition to the rocky mountains (not Rocky Mountains), there are lots of green hills around. There were lots of colors--grey/brown mountains, blue water, green hills...it was really beautiful. far as the inside, we weren’t incredibly impressed—it wasn’t as nice as the insides of other cathedrals that we’ve seen, in my opinion—but the outside was amazing! Strangely enough, outside the duomo, Gretchen and I
again ran into some people that we know from Nashville! However, it wasn’t as exciting this time because it was Gretchen’s parents, and we had planned on meeting them a few hours later back at the hotel anyway…
As many of you probably know, Milan is the fashion capital of Italy, and is quickly becoming the premier fashion city in Europe. And there are stores all over the place to prove it. We walked past all of the really fashionable stores. Again, unfortunately Gretchen refused to write this blog, so I can’t tell you which stores they were. But I do know that we passed an Armani store and a Dolce & Gabbana, which I know from the Black Eyed Peas song. Other than that, I’m not much help here…
Aside from the castle and duomo, Gretchen and I mainly just walked around the city and took advantage of our one-day public transit pass and saw the city. Now we are, as I
Steep
This isn't the best picture to illustrate it, but the mountains around Salzburg seemed very steep, compared to others I have seen. It was like Matterhorn everywhere. mentioned before, on the train en route to Venice, where we will be for a few days before heading to Florence. It has been fun for me to try out my Italian here. I learned Spanish in Argentina and then I took two semesters of Italian in college (it was a cool class taught from Spanish). My Italian is by no means great, but it’s gotten me along fairly well. Thankfully because I learned Spanish in Argentina, I can do a decent Italian accent. (However, my Italian is not as good as Gretchen’s French was!) I had a conversation yesterday with our taxi driver about the Italy’s World Cup championship this year. Today I was able to communicate with our waiter in Italian, and then today I was also able to make our train reservations in Italian. It’s been a lot of fun. The hardest part has been that it is so easy to slip back into Spanish if I don’t know the right word in Italian. Today I even got my first compliment from an Italian speaker—our taxi driver this afternoon asked me how I learned to speak Italian so well! Of course, I’d only spoken in the car
St. Gilgen, Austria
This is another picture of St. Gilgen. This is a place that Gretchen and I would definitely like to come back and visit again. At the very top of the highest peak in the background, there is a hotel. You can barely see it--it's that little bump to the right of the peak. when I knew how to say something—otherwise I kept quiet and let Gretchen or her parents answer in English. So I had to confess to him that I didn’t speak Italian, but I think that the accent from Argentina gives me some undeserved credibility. At any rate, it’s been lots of fun to get some practice.
Unfortunately, I have to close this part of the blog with some sad news. As I mentioned, we got a USA Today in our hotel in Salzburg. Well, Gretchen was reading through it and pointed out an article to me that says that just four years after buying Baja Fresh for $275, Wendy’s is now selling the struggling restaurant chain for just $31 million. I can’t help but feel responsible for this. With me being in Europe, I’m sure Baja Fresh has been missing the weekly stream of revenue that they get from me. So, I’m begging all of you to please go to Baja Fresh while I am gone and do your best to keep them in business until I get back! Because if they go out of business, I may not come back! (The real reason that Gretchen and I moved
New Houses
I'm not at all surprised that there was so much home construction going on in this area. This seems to be one of those areas that every celebrity would want to have a house for vacations. from Atlanta to Nashville is that Baja Fresh closed all of its Georgia locations.) So if you can please help me out with this, I would greatly appreciate it!
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Leighton
non-member comment
I like the kissing picture
I like the kissing picture best. I like Nana and Papa because they are coming back on Wednesday and we love them. Come home safely to Nashville, Nana and Papa. I miss Gretchen making lots and lots of jewelry. And the Pegasus is like the one on Barbie. Bye bye Uncle Gretchen and Aunt Seth! (giggle giggle) Love, Leighton