Edelweiss

Our first day in Salzburg was so relaxing and beautiful.  We stayed in a hostel that was more like a family budget hotel with a hostel in the basement.  It was definitely one of the nicer hostels that we have been in and one of my favorites because there were so many cute little kids running around.  Right up the road from our hostel was the Abbey from The Sound of Music and The Fortress of Salzburg.  We wandered the old neighborhood which is really charming, had some pretzels, and ate dinner outside.  But my favorite part of the day happened when we got back to our hostel.  We watched The Sound of Music in our hostel in preparation for our tour the next day!

Tuesday morning we woke up and went back to the old town and ate Kasekrainers for lunch and sacher for dessert.  Sacher is chocolate cake that is really popular in Austria.  Then we went on the tour!  We saw many sites from the Von Trapp's true history and filming sites of the movie.  The Von Trapp's true history is very different from the movie story.  Maria was hired by Captain Von Trapp as a tutor to one of his sick children.  In reality, they were married for 11 years before they escaped from the Nazis.  And they didn't escape by climbing the mountains to Switzerland.  They took a train to Italy and immigrated to the United States.  At this point many of their children were adults.  They also had two children together in Austria, and one more in the United States.  The age difference between Maria and the captain's oldest child was only five years and the captain's oldest son was a boy.  So after we got the real background of the Von Trapp Family Singers, we saw some of the sights that were featured in the movie.  We stopped at the path where Maria skips on her way to the family house for the first time, the gazebo where Liesl and Rolph sing 16 going on 17, the Nonnberg Abbey, the palace that is used as the back of their house, the palace that is used for the front of their house (the house was really a mixture of two places that were nowhere near one another), and the church where Maria and the captain are married (The Church of Mondsee)!  All the while, we were singing along to the soundtrack.  I couldn't ask for a more perfect day.

Just like Maria!

The palace that was used as the back of their house and the lake where they fell in!

Eating apple strudel.  It took me a total of 60 seconds to clean my plate.

The gazebo from "16 going on 17"

Again--just like Maria!

For dinner I had a Kasekrainer (shocking, I know), and we relaxed in the hotel again with The Sound of Music and snacks.  We also met an interesting crew of characters--Maximillian and his 12 year old all girls' handball team!  They were in Salzburg for a weekend of training and were traveling back to Munich the next day on the train that we needed to take!  We decided, due to our horrible history of failure with the trains so far, that it might be smart to follow them on our journey.  Sure enough, Max and his team were more than happy to have us tag along the next day.

Wednesday we woke up super early to fit in the rest of our sightseeing.  Everything in Salzburg seemed to be untouched by modernization.  It reminded me somewhat of Switzerland because it was such a peaceful town, surrounded by mountains, and very green.  After one more Kasekrainer (sorry), we were on our way (trailing behind Max and the twelve year old handball team).  I'm definitely coming back some day!  (Get ready Rita.)

Some snapshots from our day:

Fun in Mirabell Gardens--just like Maria and the gang.

This is the St. Peter's Cemetery and the information for the scene of The Sound of Music when the family is hiding from the Nazis.  It was actually filmed in Hollywood.  Everyone who is buried here actually rents their grave sites.  Every ten years, the family of the deceased has to pay a tax, and the families are also responsible for taking care of the graves.