Footprints on Cobblestone: Sounds of Music

This morning we left Vienna and drove to Salzburg, known to many as the setting for The Sound of Music (more on that later) and to us as the place where Mama Manya and Papa Joe met, married, and had their first child, my uncle, Norman. We arrived at our hotel at noon, and although it didn't (and hasn't) stopped raining since then, it's clear that Salzburg is a beautiful city! It's situated right at the foot of the Alps, and unlike other cities, where imposing beauty comes from man-made structures, Salzburg's beauty is natural--parks, gardens, mountains, lakes, rivers, Salzburg has it all.

But no tour of Salzburg could be complete without seeing a few of Salzburg's...favorite things. The great American classic that it is, The Sound of Music alone draws so many tourists to Salzburg that there's an official Sound of Music tour! This was our first stop in Salzburg. We climbed on the Sound of Music-painted bus and rode all over Salzburg and its surrounding areas, seeing many of the filming locations for the movie. I hadn't seen the movie in a long time, but of course, there was a video and soundtrack refresher on our tour bus. The whole thing was pretty cheesy (a joke the tour guide told: the Hill family was stranded one night, and a vampire invited them into his house. While they were sleeping, he bit their necks and sucked their blood, and then went to play piano. When the family appeared alive behind him, he said, "How is that possible? I thought I killed you!" Mr. Hill replied, "The Hills are alive with the sound of music.") but it made for a good time. It was amazing, though, how much of a tourist infrastructure is set up just around this movie. We stopped in one small town at the base of a mountain, called Mondsee, that happened to house the church where the wedding scene was filmed. Just because so many tourists come to see the church, the town is well kept, has a tourist center, and many shops with Sound of Music souvenirs. Anyway, at the end of the tour, we all received free brochures with maps and pictures of more filming locations, so we may have to check those out tomorrow!

Later, we went to Don Giovanni, a famous opera written by Mozart...performed by marionettes! Salzburg's Marionette Theater is famous for its work, and again, going back to The Sound of Music, it was the inspiration for the Lonely Goadheard scene of the movie. It was amazing how detailed the puppets were, and how much they could move around! By the end of the show, it felt like we were watching real people instead of puppets.

Going back to tomorrow: we'll be seeing more of the historic areas of Salzburg, but tomorrow is also when we'll see where all the different Displaced Persons camps were. Between the two of them, Mama Manya and Papa Joe were in 4 different locations in Salzburg: Riedenburg, Hallein, Beth-Bialik, and New Palestine, so hopefully we'll be able to see all of those. We also have an address for their apartment in New Palestine, so we're going to check that out as well! More later...