what will this day be like? i wonder...

Before I continue with my tour of Salzburg, I just want to talk about our hostel for a few. Anne and I got a private room, which was amazing and it had full size bunkbeds so we each got a very large bed to ourselves. We spent the evening chatting and planning the next day, making sure we'd hit all The Sound of Music points we hadn't yet seen. There were plenty and some had to be visited at specific times; and with me being the planner I am, planning was to be done. And after we caught up with life for the most part, to bed we went.

For breakfast, our hostel didn't offer any free stuff, but had 2 options for purchasing breakfast: 1) a coffee, bowl of cereal, roll and 2) unlimited. I was cheap and refused to pay. Anne had to eat so she got the unlimited. We both ended up eating. She just kept getting food and I ate half of it. Wonderful! And the best part was at the end when we took 6 extra rolls for later and Anne thought I was crazy for wanting to get more. We had room to stash them!

Ok...now back to my Sound of Music/Salzburg tour...first stop of the day was the Mirabell gardens once again. It was lightly cloudy, but not rainy and uber-gray so I wanted to get some more pictures, and as it was early in the day few people were around. We then went to the Mozart Wohnhaus, Mozart's residence when he wasn't traveling Europe as an adult. This museum was similar to the one visited the night before but had more history about Mozart's composition rather than his family. There was some about his parents, but the focus was on his acheivements. Next door to the museum is the Holy Trinity Church, where Mozart first played piano when he was a very young boy. It was small and empty, but nice. A very nice piece of musical history.

Holy Trinity Church

We then wandered over the river again, and with the better weather, and it being early instead of late in the day, the river was brighter and quite pretty. The Fortresshonhensalzburg sat high and mighty on the hillside and it was gorgeous in the early morning light.

Taking a similar path as the evening before, we wandered through the Residenzplatz again. It was easier to see this as the area where Maria splashes in the fountain during I Have Confidence but all the Christmas huts, people and the covered fountain didn't help. I admired the arches between the Residenzplatz and the plaza in front of the Domkirche, cause you know, Maria walks through them.

As with Innsbruck, Anne and I bought the Salzburg card, good for admission to almost all the attractions in Salzburg, most which are Sound of Music attractions. Though it took more effort than in Innsbruck to make sure we went to enough places where the admission totals would exceed the cost of the card, we made it worth the price and overall the cards make buying tickets smoother in general as well. A neat little place included in the card we decided to stop in was the Panorama Museum. Its simple inside, just a giant panorama painting of the city of Salzburg. There are a couple other Salzburg history items, but the center of the single room is the panorama, which from the outside looks like a giant cylinder. There's a door you enter through and the painting is enormous but fantabulous! A perfect 360 degree view of Salzburg as seen from the top of the Fortress. I loved it so much and a poster of the painting was only $10 so I got my souvenir!

bus stop!

Next, we explored the plaza on the other side of the church where Maria boarded the bus to the VonTrapps and we boaded the tram to the Fortress. The fortress is a castle, one of the largest medieval ones in Europe, that sits atop a large hill. Included in the admission to the fortress is a required audio tour where they take you through all the open to the public rooms and overlooks. It was really spectacular and the audio guide was very helpful. From one side, we had the perfect view of the Untersberg, the mountain which I hadn't seen the day before due to the bad weather. It is Maria's mountain, the mountain which she was brought up on, and the mountain where they filmed the final scene of the movie with the family hiking into "Switzerland." One of the factual errors of the movie, if you hiked over the Untersberg you'd really hike into Germany and come into contact with Hitler's "Eagle's Nest."

Schloss Leopoldskron from the Fortress

Salzburg and the Untersberg in all its glory

From the other side of the fortress, the view we'd just seen in the Panorama museum stood before me. It was gorgeous and really cool to see how nothing had really changed about this old city. If I compare my picture I took with my camera to the poster I now have hanging on my wall, I bet little would be different.

The Executioner's House - no one wants to be his neighbor

After the fortress tour ended, we took the hike down the steep slope leading from the castle and it's really amazing looking back up at the fortress how delicately balanced and built it is on top of the hill. The walkway we end up on is the one that leads to Nonnberg Abbey, so off we went to the church that started it all.

Recognizable because of its red onion dome, Nonnberg Abbey was founded way back in 714 and is the Abbey where Maria VonTrapp was a former novice, and where the movie was able to shoot a few exterior scenes. The production originally wanted to film inside the Abbey as well, but the Mother Abbess wouldn't allow it. Instead they built interiors in the Salzburg movie studio and shot those scenes on rainy days during production. The exterior gate and inner garden were used for shooting though. And it was fangirl heaven to be at the gate where Julie Andrews says "when God closes a door, somewhere he opens a window" right before she begins singing I Have Confidence.

We entered the inner garden from a separate entrance than the movie gate, so I was initially confused, but when we got to the door to the church and I turned to the left and saw the gate, I knew we were in the right place. The biggest dissapointment for me, which is quite pathetic if you really think about it, is that the bell rope they attached for the movie, and the nuns asked to leave up, wasn't there anymore. I was really looking forward to pulling the rope. But maybe too many fans had that same wish and broke it. I pretended to pull it anyway cause I'm a dork and was completely geeking out. Anne probably wished she didn't come with me.

Inside, the sanctuary was small and very dark and the coolest bit was that under the altar stairs you could see a basement room with candles lit. Eerie for sure. Back outside, I gawked at the gate some more, took even more pictures and then took a look out over the city from this side. It was then I realized how through editing the movie made it look like Nonnberg overlooked the downtown section of the city, not the other side of the hill. Very interesting, indeed. 

geeking out with the gate

quick review then a little do-re-mi

Before I begin talking about the rest of the fantabulous city that is Salzburg, I want to share my thoughts on the Panorama Tours "The Sound of Music" tour. While well organized, well run and informative, the tour wasn't as great as I was hoping. Part of the disappointment may have been due to the bad weather, but if I had gone in the summer where good weather is more common, I would have had to deal with more people.

Anyway, it wasn't that the tour was poorly done, but it just didn't feel like it was worth the ticket price, mainly for the fact that I didn't really learn anything new about the movie. I got a great deal of history of Salzburg, but all of the facts and information the guide discussed about the movie were well known to me as anecdotes from either the special features on the dvd, the documentary from the dvd, and the books about the movie. The guide told the stories well and effectively, and I liked hearing them again, but I was hoping to learn more about the making of the movie than what I already knew. For fans of the film, but not crazy ones like me, the tour was probably fantastic for the most part.

My other beef was that they really didn't take you many places, which I account for in whether the ticket value was worth it. After visiting the rest of the city, its easy to see why because most of the other filming locations are in the city and within walking distance of each other, so a giant bus wouldn't fit in well. Nevertheless, the tour website seemed to advertise getting to see more than what we did. The one perk of the tour was the chance to see all the locations outside the city center where filming took place. I wasn't going to be able to rent a car so that was the best part of the tour. However, when I get the chance to return (hopefully in spring or summertime) I would like to rent a car and travel to all the locations and sightsee on my own time. Though it will probably cost more in the end, I think I'd enjoy it more.

Now for a recount of me and Anne's personal Salzburg/Sound of Music tour...

I met up with Anne shortly after departing from the tour bus and we took the short walk to our hostel to check in, change and layer up for the evening. It had stopped snowing but the rain was on and off and it was quite cold. There was only another hour or two before it would get dark and things would begin to close up for the night so we had to get a move on. First we did the Mirabel Gardens at the Mirabel Palace. The Mirabel Palace is a government building now which you can visit but I heard wasn't very interesting inside.

The gardens, however, was where it was at; a large portion of the "Do-Re-Mi" sequence was shot in the Mirabel gardens including the famous steps sequence at the end of the number. Other places were the hedge they run/dance under, the pegasus fountain, a dwarf statue, the athletic statues and the infamous steps. We actually returned to the gardens again the next day cuz the weather was much nicer and I wanted more pics cuz I'm a dork. So these are the cumulative collection of those pics. I took multiple ones at each place, reinacting many of the dance moves and poses, but I won't torment you with those.

mirabel gardens with the Salzburg Fortress in the background

hedge, with no hedge...

pegasus fountain

view from the steps of the fountain

The hedge was just as it was in the movie, except there was a wall to the right of it that I don't remember being in the movie. And it was winter so there weren't really any plants growing on it, but I still imagine Julie Andrews doing her thing underneath. The Pegasus fountain seemed smaller than in the film but since they shot them skipping around as an aerial view, I'm guessing they used a wide angle lense to give it that effect. Whatever technique they did use, they used it a lot. The main square by the Domkirche, the cathedral for the wedding...all looked much larger on screen.

me, anne and pegasus

Another victim of winter was that a lot of the garden gates were closed and locked. Anne had been able to walk to and touch the dwarf from the song when she visited in September but now the gates were locked. The other gates that were locked were the ones on the steps so you couldn't go through them. I did a little hopping up and down, but was sad I was unable to do a complete reenactment.

the dwarf, in a locked part of the garden

athletic statues

gate was locked, couldn't reenact completely...

from the other side...

After Mirabel, we wandered along the river to the Mozart footbridge, the Mozarteg, where the children and Maria skip across on their day out in the city on their way to the mountains for a picnic. The chain Marta swings under is now gone, but otherwise, the bridge is still fully intact and very popular. It's not built for cars so pedestrians use it quite a bit.

river; used in skipping to picnic too

We then walked to the Residenzplatz and the Domkirche. Both plazas were used for when Maria travels from Nonberg Abbey to the VonTrapp villa and both were homes to large Christmas Markets. Another reason to come back to Salzburg in the summer; so I can see the plazas in all their natural glory. The fountains that are pivotal in the appearance of the film were completely covered up and surrounded by sales huts and people. The plazas therefore looked tiny. But as I said above, I think it was also a filmmaking technique that made them appear much larger in the film. We wandered around, I went inside the Domkirche. Nothing too spectacular about the church except it was really dark inside since they didn't turn on any lights, but the ceiling of the dome was wonderful. (More pics in the next post since we returned the next day when there was more sunlight)

Lastly, before dinner, we went to the Mozart Gerburtshaus, the home where Mozart was born and his family lived for 30 years while not on tour. It had a great collection of sheet music, family information, Mozart's first violin and viola, and his first compositions written when he was only a boy. The house still had the inner architeture of a very old house and I really loved the interior. The English information provided was well put together and very informative. I enjoyed that house quite a bit. 

Mozart in Mozartplatz