Austrian Road Trip: Singing in Salzburg

My wife is a huge fan of the Sound of Music. You may have guessed where this is heading. If you’re familiar with the movie, you’ll know that it’s based out of Salzburg and much of the filming took place there. They run all-day bus tours from the downtown area…every…single…day of the year.

It was surprising to learn that locals don’t know that much about the movie – apparently, it’s an “American thing”. It’s not all that easy to find movie paraphernalia, even in the tourist shops. There are no informational plaques at filming locations. But the fans keep coming. Katie’s one request for Salzburg was to attend one of those big, gaudy, bright red bus tours with “Sound of Music” plastered on the side. I’m allergic to bus tours. Hop on/hop off is the stuff of nightmares. The megaphones. The excessive photo-taking. The fact the fact that the bus color can be seen from space.

But I’m married. So I got on the bus (with a smile).

Despite the medium with which it was delivered, I did learn some interesting Sound of Music history. A large portion of the movie, including the famous introductory scene where Julie Andrews sings on a hilltop, was not even filmed in Austria. That particular scene was filmed across the border in Germany, not all that far from the Nazi rule that the family later sought escape from. The bus drove us outside of Salzburg to see other various filming sites, including the gazebo where “I am sixteen going on seventeen” took place. During one take of that scene, Liesl slipped and her foot went through a glass panel. For the final take, they had to edit out her ankle bandage. A bit later on in the tour we got a glimpse at an unrelated site – the Red Bull headquarters. It was an unassuming 1-story structure with a pointed roof that was surrounded by pond. According to our guide, the pond was filled with Red Bull.

In between locations our guide would lead the bus in sing-a-longs, at one point pulling out a stuffed goat puppet to accompany “Lonely Goat Herd”. Katie was elated. And I was far too sober.

One of our final stops was in Mondsee at the church where Julie Andrews gets married at the end of the movie. My favorite moment of the tour happened here. We had 30 minutes to sit and eat strudel covered in vanilla sauce at a local café. It just so happened that the little town we were in was testing their citywide alarm system that day. A constant barrage of near-deafening air raid sirens rang over our plates of pastries, but I was good.

The next few days in Salzburg were spent exploring by foot (including some of the filming sites that couldn’t be reached by bus). It is a sprawling but walkable city with a massive fortress right in the center of downtown. Cars are not allowed inside the center, and the streets are narrow and busy with little restaurants lining them. A canal snakes along the main road. Downtown, a food festival was taking place with tents full of picnic tables to park your snacks and beers, and live bands playing. We stopped to hydrate before venturing to the fortress.

The Fortress Hohensalzburg takes a few hours to explore properly. Steep staircases and walkways weave you through rooms that were built as long ago as 1077. From the top you can see out and over the entire city. Mountains poke up along the horizon in shades of blue, just beyond a scattering of houses.

Our guest house (“pension” in Austria) was about 10 minutes outside of town in a whisper quiet neighborhood accessible by a small but punctual city bus. At night it was nice returning to such stillness. Out our balcony and to the left is a small glimpse of a mountain from behind a few houses. Two lights blink at the top, and barely there. I missed how it felt to live in the heart of those mountains a few days ago. But this little sliver was hanging over me like a protective cloak. I tend to feel safer when I’m close to mountains than anywhere else in the world.

On our final night I was reminded of the horrible things happening in the world, not too far away, by a concerned text from dad. Even our lighthearted Sound of Music tour reminds me that the real family left Austria to escape Nazi rule. In the movie they sing a song with the line, “bless my homeland forever”. Sometimes that concept is loaded back in the U.S., tainted by the terrible things it was built on or the inequities that still infect it. Re-learning this history makes it clear that we haven’t learned much. As if our homelands are nothing more than a product to fight for. I forgot for a minute, looking at this quiet night, that people are still fighting to love their homelands in peace. I’m alone on the balcony watching the outline of the mountains. Sometimes it’s easier to be somewhere so different from home. There’s less interference in that connection. I wish I knew what it was like to love somewhere so much that you’d fight for it even when it became desperate. To feel that connected to soil that you can’t shake the roots.