Week 2: Places (part 2)

20 - 27 July: Austria
If you want to relive any fantasies of being in a major motion picture or on Broadway, then you must go to Salzburg. Edwin and I took our own absolutely divine bicycle The Sound of Music tour around Salzburg and its surrounds to re-enact most of the major scenes from classic film. While Edwin didn´t quite have aspirations to play a young Ralph while he was growing up, I have no reservations when I say I was a Maria in the making back in the 80s. We visited the street of Maria´s Abbey, along with a swarm of mosquitoes we enjoyed the palace whose lake was used in scenes of the von Trapp family´s front yard, I pranced around like a dill in front of the pavilion where Liesl and Ralph do their duet and we´re now in the vicinity of the church where the Captain and Maria were wed (in the movie), in Mondsee. Mind you, hills are numerous and many could pass for the one used in the opening credits. I have taken liberties here, and have sung The Hills are Alive at random (Georgie or Nicole, wish you were here, you know the lyrics better than I do!), in more places than one. I have a hankering to see the film again, as it´s been a few years since, but every copy we´ve tried to purloin has cost at least €29 or more. We´ll wait till we get back to Eindhoven – I´m sure I saw a copy in the €4 bin somewhere.

* We did end up buying a copy of the film and when we re-watched it, it was very gratifying to see all the sights unchanged, although filmed 45 years earlier!

Oh yes, if you go in search of Leopoldschlosse, the palace which is used for the front lake of the von Trapp family’s house in the film, and if like me it’s been a while since you saw the film, take this note: keep going until you actually find a building that looks like it could plausibly be the one. You need to look for a huge white wedding cake like structure set above a beautiful glassy lake, with 3 cypress trees at its front. It also has 3 storeys. Well. We found not one, but two bogus Leoplodschlosses, that is, we mistook 2 other buildings for the real McCoy. One was a senior citizen’s home (I ask you, how foolish we are!) and the other a convention centre! (By the way, the home that was actually used as the front of the house is now a university and we just breezed languidly by, none the wiser - we discovered this upon re-viewing of the film the other night!) But we found the lake in the end. Duh.

We visited the Festung Hohesalzburg the other day to see what a medieval castle really looks like from the inside. Not only is it the best preserved castle of its type, its cable car is the oldest in Europe. The ride up is of rollercoaster proportions (more so downwards, I must say) but I do feel sorry for the cable car operators. What a job! It must be so dull to go up and down, up and down. I think each ride takes 4 minutes. The constant cries of “woah”and “it’s soooo steep!” in any language must become dull a few hours into your shift. However, the tour itself is rather ingenius as each tour is physically led by a person, but given via a hand held audio guide in the language of your choice. The information is bite-sized and memorable, which is always a plus on a tour. The tour does miss character, I have to say, but then again, if you’re looking for characters there is a spooky marionette museum where this spooky picture was taken.

One can’t visit Salzburg without visiting one of the Mozart residences. We chose the birth house of Wolfgang, where we saw portraits, letters from family members to each other, ephemera relating to the epic tours that he and his sister made as children (from the 18th century travel medical kits and English grammar books) and lots of other information about the personalities of the family. Some of the letters he wrote to his wife, Constanza, made me laugh out loud. He tells her in a letter while he’s away in Prague or Paris, that he misses her and that he does the funniest things with the miniature that he has of her. He takes it out and tells it he misses her sweet little mouse up-turned nose, and then when he puts it away, he does it very slowly and then says “nu, nu, nu, nu, nu” with the emphasis that the word requires.That’s not quite it verbatim, but it’s pretty close. I dunno, I just think it’s kind of cute, to see the childish, sweet, love that he showed her, and that he missed her so dreadfully when he was away. Makes the genius more human and more real, even more so than the portrayal by Tom Hulce.

It’s nice to sit in the Dom of Salzburg and listen to a chamber orchestra rehearse an “Amen” oratorio with a tenor standing on a platform up high, near the organ pipes. It’s a disappointment when you realise they’re tourists too, musical troubadours from America, no less. In breaks while the conductor consults with the tenor, violinists and double bass players steal way from their spots to take photographs of the awesomely detailed frescoes and fittings of the oh-too baroque cathedral.