I was very excited to go to the Mozart House, which is an apartment building where Mozart and his family actually used to live. The apartment was quite large and very charming, and they had turned the top floor into a museum with photos and facts about his life and his time spent in Vienna. We even got to see some of his original scores.
Continuing with the musical theme of the day, we went to the Haus Der Musik (House of Music, if you couldn't guess) where we learned about sound and got to play instruments. We also learned about several important Austrian composers, including Haydn, Mozart, Beethoven, Schubert, Strauss, and Mahler. It was more of a kids' museum, but it was still fun!
The day we had in Salzburg was consumed by one thing: THE SOUND OF MUSIC TOUR! This has been one of my favorite movies for as long as I can remember, and I think this was my favorite part of Spring Break. It was a four-hour long tour that took place on a very nice coach bus that actually had a bar (great news for those of us from Wisconsin). Our tour guide was a very eccentric older man who was born in Austria, and he told a lot of jokes.
The first thing we got to see was the lake where part of the filming was done for the Von Trapp family villa. This house was only used for the view out onto the lake, and another house was used for the scenes that showed the actual house. Our tour guide explained that it made filming very complicated, especially in the scenes where they used both houses, like the one where they are in the boat and it tips over.
We drove past this other villa, which you can only get to if you are a pedestrian, and also past the abbey from the movie. This is the actual abbey that the real Maria came from, and it's the only abbey in Salzburg with a red onion-shaped dome. I wasn't able to get pictures of these because we were driving past pretty quickly.
We got a great view of the Unstburger, which is the mountain where Maria sings at the beginning of the film. It's also the mountain where they shot the end scene - when the Von Trapp family is hiking through the mountains in an attempt to escape the Nazi oppression in Austria. We also got to stop at the gazebo where Leisl and Ralph dance during the thunderstorm.
Then the tour took us a little ways out of Salzburg to the lake and mountain region of Austria. Our destination was the little ton of Mondsee, which is where they filmed the wedding scene. On the way, we made several stops where we were able to get off and take pictures of the beautiful Austrian countryside. One of the couples that took our picture was from Illinois!
When we got to Mondsee, our tour guide told us that we had an hour to do some exploring. He pointed out the church from the wedding scene, and he also showed us a little restaurant where he said they had the best apple strudel in all of Austria. So, of course, when he let us all go, the three of us made a bee-line right for the restaurant. We literally RAN across the street so that we wouldn't have to wait in line for the delicious strudel. The humiliation we faced was SO worth it, and it meant that we had more time to look around the town.
After the tour was over, we went back to Salzburg, where we decided to eat dinner at the beer hall. I wound up eating a really good wiener, as they call it in Austria, with mustard and a huge baked potato with sour cream. There's something about drinking huge mugs of beer that makes you want food with some real sustenance!
Here is where I'll end my Spring Break story, as the day we actually left involves a tale of drinking at the airport in which one of my friends accidentally ordered several shots of brandy...
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