Where to Next?: The Hills Are Alive

You simply can not come to Salzburg and not go on the Sound of Music Tour,

especially if you are as big a fan as I am of the movie and of Julie Andrews. I did dress up as Maria von Trapp (because I love Julie Andrews) at my "Come Dressed As The Person You Wanted To Be When You Grew Up" 40th birthday party, in a constume I made myself, and I've seen 'The Sound of Music' approximately 4 billion times and could recite the movie in its entirety, so I think that qualifies me as being a pretty big fan!

Not to mention that I've actually already done a tour when I was in Salzburg last time - about seven years ago, but it was all a bit of a shambles last time as it was winter and covered in snow and I was extremely sick with yet to be diagnosed bronchial pneumonia, so that put a dampener on my SOM vibe.

Not even the rain pelting down was going to ruin it this time...

We boarded the great big greyhound bus and our guide, Helmut started talking as if he was a calling a horse race. This is no mean feat if you're speaking in your second or even third language, which I guess he was. He had probably been doing this job for years and knew his spiel down pat, so when he started it was almost as if he had learnt by rote a script that was written with no punctuation from the beginning to the end and because of that had to say it all in one breath!

Our first stop was the "I am 16 going on 17" gazebo which has had to be moved a few times in the last 50 years. At first it was in the original garden, but when people would visit, they would reenact the scene where Leisel jumped from seat to seat and there were too many accidents. One lady who was 82 going on 83 tried the tricky dance moves and broke her ankle, so they moved it to the other side of the lake near a pizza place and locked its doors. However, the restaurant owner complained because people would visit and use his toilet and not buy any pizzas, so they moved it again to a little spot on its own.

This was all we saw of the place where they filmed the scene where they were pushing the cars on the way to the Salzburg Festival concert where they all sing together. In fact, there were a lot of places that we drove by where Helmut said "Behind that tree is ....." or "You can't see it, but over that mountain is ......"

So that was a bit disappointing.

One thing we did get to see though was the beautiful house of the Family von Trapp (in the movie only, the real ones didn't live here).

Probably one of the most famous scenes filmed here was when Maria and the children fall into the lake after having roamed around Salzburg in nothing but drapes and having a marvellous time.

When they fell into the water, little Gretel was meant to fall on the same side as Julie because she couldn't swim, but when it all happened, Julie fell backwards and all the children, including Gretel fell forwards. If it wasn't for Leisel pulling her out of the water, she would have drowned! Apparently she still has a fear of water to this day.

Do you remember from the movie Maria is walking from the Abbey to the von Trapp house with her 'Mary Poppins' carpet bag in one hand and her guitar in the other and she is singing "I have confidence in me"? Well, this is the lane way where that was filmed.

There was a lot of information about the real Maria von Trapp on the tour and about what happened to all the children, but after that he really ran short of SOM stuff to show us. We drove past this town which was absolutely beautiful and in which Mozart's mother was born.... but surely on an SOM tour, information on Mozart's family tree is just filling in time, don't you think?

The last stop on the tour was to the cute little town of Mondsee.

This is where St Michael's church is, where Maria and Captain von Trapp got married - in the movie only - in real life, they got married in the Abbey in Salzburg.

Our vow to not step foot into another church on this trip was thwarted when Helmut said, I'll just show you this one thing.......

So this tour was called "The One and Only Sound of Music Tour" with Salzburg City Tours, but there are lots of others you can take. We had about 20 people on our tour, half a big bus full, but we could just have easily had double that if it was booked out - too many! The other tour companies use smaller mini vans that only hold 8-10 people which can be a much more personal and social experience.

Singing along to the Sound of Music soundtrack is encouraged - which I'm a big fan of, however on our bus Jenny and I and Helmut were really the only ones singing and because the two kids (ages about 15 & 12) behind us were playing an annoying game where one does something and the other one just irritatingly giggles at her for 4 solid hours whilst their parents don't try and teach them about being aware of other people around them, that sort of drowned out anybody else singing. Also mid song Helmut would remember something he needed to tell us, so he jumped in mid chorus or mid verse, wherever.

Other than that, being driven around the Austrian countryside was beautiful. Everything was a bright lush green and the rain made it even more lovely.