even more salzburg(bob's special tours "sound of music" tour)

If you're ever in Salzburg, I recommend taking the Sound of Music tour through Bob's Special Tours. (This is the name of an actual tour agency. It is not my husband making random, witty, and entirely irreverent comments whilst driving through Europe. Although that tour is pretty fun, too.) 

I know a Sound of Music (SOM) tour sounds very touristy, and it unabashedly is. As I mentioned before, most Austrians have no idea what the SOM is. (Apparently those who do know it are either involved in the tourist trade it brings to Salzburg, or are frustrated by its inaccuracies.) But the tour was also a fantastic overview of Salzburg, and we saw and learned things we would never have seen or learned on our own.

Bob's Special Tours (recommended, might I add, by our good friend Rick Steves, as well as Fodor's and Frommer's) is great because they use eight-person minivans rather than big tour buses. It feels cozy and personal, and you can go places the big tour buses cannot.

When you go to Bob's Special Tours at Rudolfskai 38, you see the view up top there. I know by now you have become very good at orienting yourself in Salzburg. :D You are facing north (and slightly east), looking across the Salzach river towards the "New Town," which as we mentioned before is actually hundreds of years old. 

Then you get in the van and zoom off with a delightful tour guide. Our guide was a young Austrian woman with an Irish accent. When I asked her about that, she explained that her Irish boyfriend had influenced her English dialect. :)  She was delightful, and very knowledgeable about Salzburg.

Our first stop was the Mirabell Gardens, which are part of Mirabell Palace. Do you remember when I mentioned that Salzburg was run by prince-archibishops who pretty much held the ultimate in both secular and religious power? These gardens were laid out for one of those guys in 1730.

Do you recognize this rearing Pegasus statue in the Mirabell Gardens? It's from the SOM scene when the kids (attired in playclothes made from draperies) all dance before they line up on the stairs.

 

Here are the stairs where they lined up, a.k.a. "The Do-Re-Mi Steps." :)

 

And here's a view of the rest of the gardens. Doesn't the castle look nice up there behind it?

One of the best views of Salzburg is from the Museum of Modern Art on Mönchsberg, because (1) its elevation offers a great panoramic view, and (2) you cannot see the Museum of Modern Art on Mönchsberg when you are standing in front of it and facing away from it. :) 

Its facade is hideous (I won't even show it to you . . . it's probably meant as a sophisticated ironic statement about something, but it's just ugly), and our tour guide apologized profusely for its existence. But its views are breathtaking.

Here's something neat our tour guide pointed out as we drove along. There is writing under the eaves on many of these old Salzburg homes.

The date on the left is the date when the home was built.

 

And the date on the right is the year in which it was most recently renovated.

("An gottes segen, ist alles gelegen" is literally "with God's blessings, all is," which means "Everything depends on God's blessings." At least, I think. Let me know if I'm wrong.)

 

Here is a photo of the Untersberg from our van. It's in the alps between Salzburg and Berchtesgaden, Germany. The Untersberg is important to Salzburg, and is a symbol of Salzburg. This is one reason the makers of SOM wanted to include it in the film. The scene at the end of the movie, where the von Trapps flee Austria by hiking to Switzerland over the mountains . . . that was filmed here, near Berchtesgaden.

Unfortunately, Berchtesgaden is home to Hitler's Eagle's Nest, and is a very bad place to hike towards if you're trying to flee the Nazis. The real von Trapps pretended to go on a mountain hike (they went hiking frequently) but then hopped a train to Italy. Switzerland is actually a five hour drive from Salzburg.

Hey, do you remember the Salzburg Panorama in my last Salzburg post, when I told you to pay attention to that last house? It was the front of this house. (This is the back of that house.) Do you recognize it?

 

Yeppers. This is Schloss Leopoldskron, and its back facade was the back of the von Trapp home. Do you remember the scene where the Baroness is waiting with Captain von Trapp to meet Maria and the kids, and they row up in a boat and fall out? That's here. (You can just see the back terrace where the Baroness lamely tried to play ball with the kids, and where they sat around drinking and talking. We got closer than this, but I wanted to show you this photo because the lake looks pretty with the reflection.)

According to our tour guide, the actress who played Gretl (the youngest) could not swim, but nobody knew this. She said that Gretl's expression when she stands up in the water after the boat falls over is one of pure (and real) terror. She also told us that the water was deep, so they built it up so that the actors could stand up in the water when they got out of the boat. Apparently, whatever mixture of stuff they used to build up the lakebed was a good medium for water lilies to grow, which they did, for many years after the movie.

Do you see the red belfry in the photo below? That's the Nonnberg Abbey (Stift Abbey) where the real-life Maria spent time as a novice nun.  In real life, she also returned here to marry Captain von Trapp at the gothic church there. No movie filming was done here . . . the convent was recreated in some Salzburg movie studios, and some filming was done at another convent. (The filming at the other convent got the nuns there in trouble. The nun actresses in the movie hiked up their habits and smoked cigarettes in the courtyard during their filming breaks, and tourists passing by the gate thought Salzburg nuns were wild and wooly. It took them a long time to live down their bad-girl reputation after that. Our tour guide said her mother's friend has been a nun in that convent for over 50 years, and corroborated this anecdote.)

When it came time for Maria's wedding in the movie, the filmmakers thought the church where she actually got married was too plain. They wanted baroque rather than gothic architecture. :) Later on we'll see where the wedding was actually filmed.

 

This is Frohnburg Palace. Its courtyard and front facade were used as the front of the von Trapp house. (Remember Maria walking along this wall when she's first going to work for them and singing "I have confidence"?)

The gazebo originally stood at Schloss Leopoldskron, but folks there got tired of pushy tourists trying to break into it to dance, so it was later recreated at Hellbrunn Palace. I think our guide told us that the interior scenes were shot on a set (it does look small for all that dancing around, doesn't it?) but I was kind of distracted because the best Christmas market in Salzburg is at Hellbrunn Palace, and I was trying to sneak a peek at it before we left.

 

Okay, this was my favorite part of the tour, and also Claire's, and maybe everybody's. It was one of the best parts of our whole trip. We took the scenic route out towards the Salzkammergut lake district. Our tour guide put on the soundtrack from the Sound of Music, and I could hear Claire singing the whole way. It was so cute. She looked out the window and was so happy. The scenery was incredible. It was also some of the only snow we saw on our entire vacation.

Our tour guide said that people often ask her how the homes and farms are kept so neat and tidy in Austria. She said there are four main reasons: (1) Austrians are trained from a very young age to handle their own trash ("take your trash with you") and tend to be green and not dump stuff, (2) Austria generates much revenue from tourists, and tourists expect Austria to be neat and tidy, (3) Austrians tend to buy one home and live in it forever, so are motivated to keep it up, and (4) reasons 1 through 3 create peer pressure to keep things neat and tidy. :)

We happened to zoom past Red Bull worldwide headquarters, and I tried to photograph the buildings, which were cool looking, but all you get below is a shiny idea of what they're like.

 

Did you know Red Bull is an Austrian product? It is. Although Austrian Red Bull drinks are three times stronger than American red bull drinks. (Our FDA will not approve that much caffeine in a single drink.) Austrian Red Bulls are the equivalent of seven espressos!

Dietrich Mateschitz, the Austrian entrepreneur who founded Red Bull, is very popular. Our tour guide told us that if you want to do something insane in the world of extreme sports, write to Red Bull, because they will probably sponsor you. :)

As we got out to the Salzkammergut lake district, we stopped at a restaurant to drink coffee (Claire had hot chocolate) and cake. Can I describe the wonder of delicious cake and warm drinks enjoyed at dusk in a warm room with a view of a lake and the alps? This is Lake Something Something. (Our Bob's Special Tour Guide told us, but I forgot because I was thinking about cake.)

It was heaven.

 

Here is Marilyn's cake.

Here is Bob's cake.

 

I forgot to photograph Claire's cake. Here is mine . . . I ordered sachertorte, which you will have to eat when you go to Austria. It was so good. I'm sorry about the flash.

After this break (the entire tour was four hours long) we went to Mondsee, where Maria's wedding was filmed at Mondsee Cathedral.

There are corpses in the altar. (They were removed for the wedding.) Two priests take care of this cathedral, and one is a fan of the corpses, and another is not. Depending on who is in charge at any given time, the corpses are in place or in storage. When we were there, the Fan-of-the-Corpse Priest was in charge. One corpse is sitting up (circled with a blue circle in the second photo), and four are lying down (blue arrows point to them). I think they used to be bishops.

 

 

Yeppers.

But hey, the ceiling is pretty.

 

The church looked small compared to Maria's wedding church, and our guide explained that they filmed her coming down the aisle three times, to make it seem bigger.

It is a very lovely church (except for the whole corpse thing), and I think they've been able to keep things maintained very well because of all the tourist revenue.

And that was the end of our wonderful Sound of Music tour, which I do hope you can take one day, because it's very informative and delightful. We zoomed back to Salzburg in the dark, and chatted with our guide, and it was a lovely day in every way.