New Year's Eve. We started with the "Sound of Music" tour in
the morning. The Sound of Music was filmed mostly in and around Salzburg.
None of the residents have heard of it (musicals are a bit difficult to
translate), but it's a big tourist attraction. They were supposed to
pick us up at our hotel, but they forgot about us, so we had to have the
hotel call them and the tour got off to a slightly late start.
The tour was nice because we got to see some of the area outside of
the city that we wouldn't have seen otherwise, but I think the actual
sights might have been more interesting if I had actually seen the
movie in the last 15 years.
It was raining during much of the tour, but we were in the bus most
of the time so it wasn't a problem.
We saw the house that was used in the movie (actually the front and
back of the movie house were from two different buildings, so we saw
both of them). You can't go inside though because it is leased from the
city by an American school. We also saw the pavilion which was used for
the song "16 going on 17" -- Sara says it is smaller than it
looked in the movie.
It was built for the movie, but they donated it to the city after they
were done filming. It was originally at the house, but they moved it to
a park so people could see it. The park is apparently pretty interesting
during the summer, with fountains and things. Not as exciting during the
winter.
Next they drove us out into the mountains. We stopped in some town
which didn't appear to have any connection with the movie.
But it's where Mozart's mother lived. (Mozart spent his childhood in
Salzburg, so he's a big deal there.) We went on to another town, Mondsee
(Moon Sea). The church there was used in the movie when they got
married.
After the tour we saw Mirabell Gardens, a residence that the
archbishop built for his mistress who bore him 15 children. They have
had quite the archbishops in Salzburg. The garden has a bunch of statues
of gnomes (also used in the movie). The emperor apparently destroyed a
lot of them because they were grotesque, but we liked the ones we saw.
Next we went for a walk around the old part of town. It was quite
crowded, even though most stores (and some of the restaurants) were
closed for the holiday. It appeared that people just ate and drank
through the afternoon until it got dark enough for fireworks. We found
a little pizzeria and had a great salad and a pizza.
We had gotten the impression that there was a Mozart concert at the
cathedral, so we went there. It was quite crowded. It turned out to be
a mass with just a couple of Mozart songs. The music was nice, and the
cathedral looked nice, but the half hour sermon in German was a bit
too long for us (since we don't know any German).
We walked around for a while, but it started to rain so we went back
to the hotel for a rest. Finally around 11:00 PM the rain stopped,
and we left again to see the fireworks. The "official"
fireworks didn't start until midnight, but there had already been
fireworks going off all evening. Apparently you can buy pretty fancy
fireworks in Austria. As we were walking back to the river we had to
watch where we were going because people would light firecrackers and
just toss them on the sidewalk. Closer to the river, people were
lighting fireworks which would shoot off into the air and explode --
just like the "official" fireworks, except not quite as big
or high. Still past anything that is legal in the U.S. By the time
midnight came around, it was hard to see the real fireworks through
all of the smoke from all the other ones that had been going off.
There was supposed to be music, but we weren't able to hear it --
probably too far away and too much noise from the fireworks.
