Sunday, August 14, 2011

The hills are alive with the Sound of Music.

‘The Sound of Music’ has always been a favourite classic. My whole family love all the songs and the movie, so while we are in Austria, we decided that we would drive the three hours from Vienna to Salzburg, where ‘The Sound of Music’ was filmed. Mum and dad booked accommodation and we were off. Along the highway, halfway to Salzburg, we stopped at a very big roadside restaurant called Landzeit where all the waiters and waitresses were wearing traditional clothing, and were serving cakes and fruit punnets and lots of unusual drinks. It was so fancy, it could have been a holiday resort. While mum and dad were chatting and drinking coffee, Maisy and I set off to the playground where we stayed until it was time to hit the road again.  Just another 1 and a ½ hours. There were still lots of fields of sunflowers to see along the way and pretty little towns and farms. We all ate our homemade sandwiches along the way.
When we got to our hotel, we had to get straight onto a mini bus, which took us to the BIG Sound of Music tourist bus. Our bus driver's name was Lazlo, and as soon as we were on the bus, he let Maisy sit in the driver’s seat and toot the horn. It was surprisingly loud, but the funniest thing was, there was a man on his mobile phone that was walking in front of the bus when Maisy tooted the horn. The poor man jumped out of his skin and made a fist at the driver who pointed to Maisy. Lazlo was very, very funny.

Our tour guide then climbed aboard the bus. It was a lady in a traditional Austrian dress. Her name was Naomi. We had a quick tour of the town of Salzburg as we drove out.

Our first stop was the lake where Maria and the 7 children of the Captain went on a boat, saw their father, stood up and waved, then fell off. Our guide told us that they had to wait 11 weeks until they were able to film this scene on a sunny day, and the water was freezing by this time.  But the camera wasn’t working properly, so they all had to fall in the water again. This time when they fell in the water, Gretel the youngest of 7 who couldn’t swim almost drowned because Maria fell off the wrong way. You can see it in the movie.


They also filmed the glass gazebo scene where Rolf and Liesel were singing ‘I am Sixteen Going on Seventeen’ in Leopold’s Crown Palace, but because it was privately owned, and the owners were sick of the tourists coming to see the glass gazebo they moved it to a public park a few kilometres away.

 We then went to the place where they filmed Maria singing ‘I have Confidence in me’ on the way to the Captain’s house, where Maria was going to work as a governess.

On the way to the next scene we drove along the 4 mountain lakes.

Our next stop was at a large village town called Mondsee, where the Captain and Maria got married. Five kilometres away was where the children were seen by their father, climbing high up into the trees. This was the longest stop, and our guide suggested that we should sit in a café and eat apple strudel, so that is exactly what we did. The strudel was delicious, and it came with 2 mouth-watering scoops of vanilla ice-cream. Next we went into the church, and just got to hear the end of a violin concert. It was so peaceful, but the most unusual thing about the church which we noticed, that no one could have guessed was that  there were 5 skeletons behind the altar, that were displayed behind glass and covered with bling, jewels, gold and silver. It was very peculiar, and they are almost 1000 years old. There were a fair few tourist shops as well, so we bought a couple of postcards and an edelweiss flower pressed in a glass frame to have as a Christmas decoration. Edelweiss is very rare, and can only be found growing in the wild at the top of very high mountains.

It was almost the end of our tour. We sang all our favourite songs on the way back and when we got off we walked to the Mirabell Gardens, where they filmed even more of the Sound of Music. Lots of scenes when they were filming ‘Do-Re-Mi’ were filmed here, such as the Central Fountain, the Ivy Covered Archway, the Dwarf Garden, the athletic sculptures, The Pegasus fountain and the Mirabell steps. We had an excellent and tiring day, but definitely worth it while the sun was out.




We continued to walk around the lovely old town and for dinner we all had an Italian meal overlooking the beautiful city of Salzburg.
It was quite a walk back to our hotel but there were lots of things to see.

Charlotte

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