Salzburg- The Hills are Alive

When I first found out that I was going abroad, I coordinated a few trips with my closest friends from home Nicole and Brent who are both studying in England. Brent is really obsessed with the Sound of Music so we knew that if we could only go to one place it would be to Salzburg. We made travel plans and it couldn't fit into Nicole's schedule but she said to go without her. So we decided Valentine's Day weekend would be good and it was nice to be able to spend that weekend together since we have known each other since elementary school and are such great friends. Brent had the whole weekend mapped out around elements from the movie, and I through in a few extra things that I wanted to see about Mozart. My friend Jamie goes to school with me here in Berlin and she was planning on going there alone for the weekend so I invited her to stay with us because she shouldn't have to be alone there. I warned her though that Brent can get a little crazy about things and that we were both pretty obsessed with Sound of Music things.

The first day we walked around the city (really small) and went to the Fortress (Hohensalzburg) because it was a nice day and we heard that there was rain in the forecast for the weekend. We had four days there, which was a lot for such a small city so we didn't want to cover everything in one day. The fortress was beautiful and we opted to walk up the mountain instead of paying 7 euro to take the cable car up. It was so steep and at some points I was afraid that I was going to fall down the rocky path. But it was a beautiful view the whole way up and it was definitely worth it. At the top we walked around and took pictures of the amazing view (which can be seen on my snapfish account username laurablyler@gmail.com password berlin). It was so sunny that we couldn't see the Alps too well but it was still beautiful. It was the best day that we ended up having because the others were cloudy so I'm glad we went there first. The fortress dates back to 1077 and was built by the Archbishop, but it was changed over the years because each Archbishop wanted something else added to it. After the fortress we went to the house where Mozart lived but we didn't go in because it was expensive. But the outside was nice...

The next day was our big day of Sound of Music fun. We took the tour which was not what I expected. I had a vision of a big tour bus with tacky pictures on the side with lots of people singing. It was much more laid back. There were 8 of us in a red van with a tour guide named Carlos who was from Portugal. Brent and I had to sit up front with him and he kept trying to make us sing along but it was awkward because nobody else was singing along. Brent and I knew as much as he did and we even knew a few things he didn't know. We first went to the house where they filmed the scenes from the back of the house. They used two houses. It is owned by Harvard University and the only scene filmed inside was the ballroom scene. We saw the lake where they were boating in the curtain outfits. After that we went to the gazebo. The gazebo was at that house but they moved it because Harvard didn't want people going there so it was moved to a castle outside of the city in the area where the house where they filmed the rest of the movie was. You can't go in the gazebo because a few years ago a woman was running from bench to bench singing "I am 50 going on 60" and she fell and broke her hip. So we only got pictures from the outside. After that Carlos drove us to St. Gilgin which is a small town where they filmed some of the scenic scenes of the mountains in the beginning of the movie. There is a beautiful lake called Lake Wolfgang and in the summer it is a resort town. After that we went to Mondsee which is where the church where Maria and Captain were really married. We had amazing apple strudel at a cafe in Mondsee. The tour ended at Mirabell gardens where a lot of scenes from the do re mi song were filmed. We ran around there and took so many pictures of us reenacting the movie, it was a blast. After that Brent and I walked to the house that was used as the front, the yellow one. It was not included on the tour and we had to see it! We took lots of pictures and ran down the lane singing "I have confidence!" The house is now used as the Mozart music University.

After that we met up with 2 friends from Berlin that were also there for the weekend, Caroline and Ian. We went to dinner at an authentic Austrian restaurant that we found and nobody spoke English which was good for us to practice our German. The food was excellent!

The next day we went up to Winkler Terrace which overlooks the city and a few scenes from the movie were filmed there. We walked around the mountain and took lots of pictures of the Alps in the background. After that we visited Mozart's birth house. It is now a museum but it is really cool because it is very modern. It is hard to describe but the exhibit is very modern and is minimalistic. The end of the museum displayed photos and images of his operas and the stage construction.

After that we met Caroline and Ian again at the Augustiner Brau. It dates back to the 1600s. It was founded by the monks there and it was so interesting. We each had a liter mug of beer and they poured the beer from barrels. It was so good, definitely the best beer I have had here so far (but I haven't been to Munich so I'll have to see after that trip...) Brent really enjoyed that because it was something traditionally German.

That night we just relaxed and got ready to leave the next day. On Sunday we watched the Sound of Music at our hostel which was a great way to end our musical weekend.. we got to see all the places we visited and where we recreated our own version of the movie!