The Sound of Music

Salzburg Austria

October 8th-10th 2008

You may be aware that Salzburg Austria is where the movie The Sound of Music was filmed. If you are not aware of this, you are like most of the folks from Salzburg Austria! We thought that was pretty strange but as our Sound of Music Tour Guide told us, since much of what was in the movie was altered from reality into Hollywood, it is not surprising they never embraced the movie. Yes you did catch that right we took a "Sound of Music Tour". Kinda touristy and schmaltzy I know but Rick Steve's the ultimate tourist highly recommended it. So far in all of the countries we have traveled to and all of the attractions we have visited or skipped, he hasn't pointed me in the wrong direction yet!

So one of the first places we went to is the house used for shooting all of the scenes with the rear of the house and the lake. The home is now the site of the American Cultural Studies school owned by Harvard University. For a while the gazebo that was used for shooting the scene with the girl singing "I am 16 Going on 17" was here. After a while, too many American tourists discovered this and disregarded the signs stating private property keep out, and hopped the fence to have their picture taken in front of it. This was disruptive to the students so they moved it to the nearby Hellbrun Palace. Here we were able to take our tourist pictures without even breaking the law.

The home used for the front of the house scenes is near the palace but is a private residence and they don't do photo shoots. The house that the real VonTrap family lived in is in Salzburg too but is a monastery and they ended up building 17 foot tall walls around the place to keep out the tourists. Apparently this is working quite well for them.

This picture is of the gardens at Mirabell Palace in Salzburg. They turn off the fountains for the winter starting in October so we missed that completely. On the far right of the picture is a greenery tunnel. There were scenes from the movie shot here too. The gardens here are quite beautiful and the palace itself is apparently amazing. I had planned on coming back here for a concert later in the week and therefor didn't take more pictures while we were here. I never did make it back and am disappointed not to have taken them while I could.

This picture is of the mountains where they shot the scenes of Maria singing at the beginning of the movie. These mountains are not really in Salzburg but about 30 minutes away, but it is a gorgeous area and worth driving to. The mountain she was supposed to be singing on is the Untersburg mountain, part of the Alps. The funny thing about that, is that they show them escaping to Switzerland over these mountains in the movie and the truth of the matter is that on the other side of that mountain is...Germany. Not exactly where you want to go to escape from Hitler eh? The real VonTrap family actually took a train and escaped to Italy! However they really did sing in a concert the night they escaped. This is a picture of the side entrance to the Concert Hall they performed at.

The coolest thing is that this concert hall and entrance are built right into the side of the mountain! The last pictures are of the cemetery that was supposedly part of the Abbey where Maria lived, and where the family hid behind tombstones as they were trying to hide from Hitlers forces when they escaped. Well the cemetery is actually in a different part of town than the Abbey. The Abbey doesn't allow visitors either, but this cemetery gets plenty of visitors, with or without the help of the movie. The beautiful grounds are like a bunch of mini gardens at each tombstone. Here is the gate the VonTrap family arrived at begging the nuns for entrance in the movie.

We heard a funny story from our tour guide because her mother has a friend who is a nun in the abbey where they filmed the movie. She said that while filming was going on and they did allow visitors, the visitors often saw the cast of the movie in costume, sitting around in the courtyard during breaks. These actress nuns would regularly be taking a smoking break or because of the heat have their little nun dresses hiked way up above their knees in hopes of cooling down. Because the visitors were unaware of the filming going on inside, the word spread all over the region about those horrible nuns from Salzburg. It took them years to restore their reputation!

As a compete side note, as Jeff and I were wandering through this beautiful cemetery nestled directly onto the Monchberg mountain, we noticed several plots that were framed out and full of dirt. Jeff swore he saw bones in the dirt. Well we did a bit of research and found the strangest thing. The plots in this cemetery are not purchased they are RENTED!!! So whenever your descendants stop paying on your little plot of land, out you go! Not kidding...have you ever heard of such a thing? Interesting way to deal with supply and demand huh?!