While in Wien, we decided to take a day out and head to Salzburg for a day trip. The train ride was about 3 hours each way. Much of the filming for the Sound of Music took place in and around Salzburg. I was really excited to see the city and see where everything was filmed. Most of the larger buildings that were used in the movie weren't in the city and required a tour for you to see them. It was a bit pricy and took up a lot of time so we elected to not do the tour. Instead we wandered the city and saw as much as we could.
Our first stop was the Mirabell Gardens where sections of the "Do-Re-Mi" song was sung. They had dug up all the flowers so it looked quite different from the movie.
Our next stops were both related to Mozart. We went to one of Mozart's apartments and then to his birthplace. This trip is turning into quite the musical tour.
Left: Mozart's apartment from 1773 to 1780. Right: Mozart's birthplace and house from from 1747 to 1773.
Both places held a museum, but we decided not to go as we went to the larger one in Wien. Most of Mozart's apartment was destroyed by a bomb in WWII and when that section was reconstructed, it became an office. Later the International Mozarteum Foundation purchased it and reconstructed the building to what it would have looked like when Mozart lived there.
There were tons of people in front of Mozart's birthplace. You knew you were approaching it before you even got there. There was a huge crowd gathered right in front, taking pictures. Of course we had to join them! Like Mozart's apartment, his birthplace has been under renovations too.
Mozart's birthplace was right in the heart of Salzburg's Getreidegasse, a shopping street that is decorated with iron signs for shops, with its narrow street and houses standing tall above you.
Left: The windy street of Getreidegaase; Right: Elaborate sign for a McDonalds!
We wandered around the town a bit, making our way up to the castle overlooking Salzburg. We saw the Horse Pond which appears in the Sound of Music, but I don't remember where exactly. I'll have to watch the movie again! (Yay procrastination!)
The Horse Pond
Next to it, is the Rock Riding School or the Festival House where the von Trapp family sang Edelweiss (the linked version is from when they sang it earlier in the movie, not at the festival) before escaping the country. We couldn't go inside, but just walked past the outside.
We went to look at the Cathedral, but as with the rest of Europe, it was under construction. They had also put up a plastic covering to protect the statue that was right outside of it. We didn't go in.
En route to the Hohensalzburg Fortress, we can across two interesting site: a giant chess game and a huge golden ball with a fake person standing on top of it. There was a huge crowd surround the chess board and I'm guessing people probably spend hours here, watching and / or playing chess. There were a number of smaller boards set up as well. The fake person standing on the ball looked SO real at first. I didn't know it wasn't a real person until I realized it never moved!
Looks real doesn't it?
Finally, we made it to the base of the fortress and we took the funicular up. From the top we could see most of Salzburg before us.
The fortress is Europe's biggest fortification, built in 1077! We were able to tour the fortress, explore a marionette museum and another museum about the fortress' history. By the end of it, I was exhausted!
Before heading back to our hostel, we had one final stop: a bakery to taste the Mozarttorte. Mozart has a chocolate named after him and consequently a cake made from the flavours of the chocolate. It is made from marzipan, surrounded by dark and light layer of nougat creme and coated with chocolate.
After all that eating, we headed back to our hostel for a night of watching, you guessed it, yes, the Sound of Music!
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