Today we took a day trip to Salzburg, just across the Austrian border. We caught a train early this morning and, once the sun rose, were again pleased to have a view of the snowy German and Austrian countryside, dotted with the occasional quaint village and mountain vistas. For those less familiar, Salzburg is best known for being Mozart’s birthplace, as well as the setting for The Sound of Music and the home of the real Von Trapp family before they fled Austria.

We arrived in Salzburg mid-morning and walked through Rick Steve’s audio tour of old town Salzburg. The city is beautiful and reminded me quite a bit of Monaco, with its fortress on the hill, posh cobble-stone shopping lanes, and an affluent vibe. Salzburg also has its own Chriskindlmarkt (Christmas market) and during our stroll we saw several groups of adorable school children bundled up in their winter gear (think kid-brother Randy from A Christmas Story) on their yearly field trip to the market.

The audio tour was pleasant and informative and took us through several pretty squares nestled between grand baroque buildings, the beautiful Salzburg cathedral (where Mozart played as a young man), through the cemetery and catacombs (the inspiration of the Hollywood set where the Von Tropps hide from the Nazis in the movie), past the Salzburg Festival Hall (where a few scenes of The Sound of Music were filmed), and right past Mozart’s birthplace and family home.

We finished our tour just in time to find a spot for lunch, picking one that Rick described as serving “hearty peasant food”, which turned out to be exactly what we needed after a few hours of strolling around in the cold. The Gasthaus Wilder Mann was warm and cozy, the food was hearty as promised, and the beer refreshing. Ahhhh gemütlichkeit…

Charles booked a Sound of Music tour with Bob’s Special Tours for the afternoon, so we killed time between lunch and the tour by strolling through the Chriskindlmarkt (with some gluhwein). Charles thought this little guy was “right up my alley”. I answered with, “I think that stick is right up his alley. ” Perhaps too much gemütlichkeit. (I’m still pretty proud of that one.)

Finally, we reported to Bob’s office for Bob’s special Sound of Music tour. We never did meet Bob, but Rosa Maria gave us (and four other Americans) a lovely tour in a bright yellow mini-bus. Americans are the only ones that go on this tour because The Sound of Music fandom is strictly an American fascination about an American movie. Though it was based on the real Von Trapp family from Salzburg, enough of the original story was changed for the movie that it doesn’t quite have the same appeal outside the U.S. So, naturally, Salzburg locals become slightly miffed when Americans arrive in their musical mecca and the birthplace of the great Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart and care only about seeing artifacts related to a movie that doesn’t tell a real story about Salzburg.

Rosa Maria did a great job “giving the people what they want” with plenty of Sound of Music trivia – but also mixed in some historical context about Salzburg and some facts about the real Von Trapp family (which made the tour slightly more interesting for Charles, who didn’t watch The Sound of Music at least once a week as a child like some of us). Highlights included:

• The home that served as the setting for (some) of the terrace scenes, as well as the lake that Maria and the children fall into in the movie (which was not the home of the real Von Trapp family)
• One of two gazebos built for the “Sixteen Going On Seventeen” scene where Liesl and Rolfe twirl around (which has been relocated twice since the filming because of the disruptive nature of twirling American tourists)
• The mountain range that the movie version of the Von Trapp family climbs to cross into Switzerland to escape the Nazis (which in reality is the German border and would have been a terrible escape plan)
• The cathedral where the captain and Maria were married in the movie (which is in a completely different city, Mondsee, and is not where the real Von Trapps got married)
  

  

  
• Mirabell Gardens, where Maria and the children sing “Do Re Mi” in the movie
  

  

If you can’t tell by the side notes in parentheses, many of the things we SoM lovers hold so dear were completely fabricated for the movie. Even still, the tour was still enjoyable overall – so long as you recognize it for what it is – a Hollywood studio tour that just doesn’t happen to be in Hollywood. It was getting late by the time the tour ended, so we made for the train station, grabbed a quick kebap, and headed back to Munich for the evening.