The hills are alive with the sound of music! A weekend in Salzburg

A view of Salzburg from the top of the fortress!
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This is was the first weekend most of us left Berlin. A group of us weren't really sure what we wanted to do. I suggested going to Salzburg, Austria, the place where my favorite movie, "The Sound of Music," was filmed. I really wanted to take a weekend trip there, but I wasn't sure anyone else shared my obsession with The Sound of Music and would want to take the tour with me. Luckily, Becky, Kait, and Karen were up for it. We took an early morning train to Munich, and then a connecting train from Munich to Salzburg. Our 6:52 departure time wouldn't have been so bad if I wouldn't have stayed up until 2AM watching "The Sound of Music" on Youtube.

The group in front of the von Trapp movie house!
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On our way into Austria, we could see the mountains from the train. We got really excited and started humming "Climb Every Mountain" (I was not the only one to watch "The Sound of Music" the night before). In Salzburg, we had to take a bus to get to our hostel. As we're sitting on our bus, a tour bus sideswipes us, and the window on the tour bus shatters. It was kind of a rocky start to our weekend, but after getting on another bus, we finally made it to our hostel.

Salzburg was beautiful! I couldn't believe how many churches were in such a small area. In the middle of the city, there is a huge fortress on a hill. We walked to the top of the fortress just as all the church bells were ringing all over the city. It was amazing! We also stopped at Nonburg Abbey on the way up. It was the abbey Maria von Trapp was in, and where Julie Andrews sang "I have confidence."

The best tour ever. Check out my sweet ride.
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We also found out that our hostel plays "The Sound of Music" every night. So, of course we watched it. We even sang along to most of the songs (okay all of the songs). The girl next to us laughed and said we watched the movie too much.

The next morning we went on the best tour I have ever been on, Fraulein Maria's Bicycle Tour. We rode around Salzburg for 3.5 hours and saw sites from the movie and from the actual von Trapp family history. What made the tour even better were the bikes- old fashioned, mint green bikes. Mine had a basket. We started off at Mirabell Gardens, where most of the "Do-Re-Mi" scene was filmed. We also went to St. Peter's Cemetery (where the family hids at the end of the movie), Nonberg Abbey, Schloss Leopoldskron (the house and lake where Maria and the children fell off the boat), Fronburg (the von Trapp's house in the movie), and the Gazebo. The tour was amazing. We biked through the town and the country. And we definitely took pictures by everything and sang the songs throughout the tour (we had a very understanding tour guide- from Muscatine, IA!).

After the tour, I was going to say that I could die happy, since I saw the locations of my favorite movie, but since we were going on a cable car up to the Untersburg Mountains next, I wasn't sure if that was the best thing to say. I didn't think that it actually took you that far up. Wrong assumption, when we got there, I just saw cables going into a big cloud. The trip up took about 15 minutes. It was a pretty cloudy day, so we couldn't see the top of the mountains like we wanted. We did get a great view of Salzburg though. At the top, the cloud still surrounded us, so we were walking through fog. Karen liked the fog because she coudn't actually see how high up she was. I didn't like the fog after I couldn't see where the trail I was walking on led to. The cable car ride up and down the mountain was a lot of fun. It was weird going through the cloud because we couldn't see anything at all for awhile, and then we would see giant boulders really close to us.

After the cable car ride, we walked around Salzburg until we had to get back on the train. We found out that Salzurg is actually a pretty small city. It was absolutely beautiful though! The buildings were so old. Most of the streets were cobblestone. Some buildings were built into the mountains too. A lot people still wear the traditional Austrian clothing around too!

All in all, Salzburg was AWESOME! I don't think you'd have to like "The Sound of Music" to like Salzburg either, I learned most people there aren't big fans of the film. I'm a big fan though, so for the first time, I didn't feel too badly about looking like a tourist and taking pictures of everything.

Thanks for reading! So long, farewell, auf wiedersehen, goodnight! :) Sarah