The Hills are Alive with the Sound of… Breaking Bones?

We were more than happy to leave the high waters of Venice. Apparently people go there over and over again to see the high waters and never do (Mego?!) and we got a first hand look (and feel) of the rain that helped contribute to the flooding. Alright, I guess that’s pretty cool (actually really cool, about 20 degrees cool). Vienna was the perfect place to land after a miserable cold and wet day in Italy.
After getting acquainted with Austria and our wonderful double date with the homophobe and the mute (which I am still laughing over days later. Honestly, it has been best described as a cross between the Born Identity and Seinfield – Thanks Williford!) we knew it was time to take the train to the city I have dreamed about since I was 5, Salzburg. For those of you who are not addicted to the movie like myself, Salzburg is where The Sound of Music was filmed, and where the real Von Trapp family lived. I grew up watching The Sound of Music at least once a week and I am proud to say that I can repeat every line of the movie as well as every lyric to every song (yes, I said I was proud of that).
We took the 3 hour train ride from Vienna to Salzburg early in the morning and arrived more hyper than I have been this entire trip. I should also mention that we were running on very little sleep at this point because we stayed up to an ungodly hour watching the movie on my laptop to prepare ourselves for the best day trip of our Europe tour. We did a lot of research on what to do when we got there, and we decided that we had to be complete tourists and go on an actual Sound of Music Tour. We found our bus and tour guide and sat in our seats with wide eyes, huge grins, and ants in our pants. I’ve never been one to enjoy a touristy bus tour because you just sit and watch the city fly by you, but this tour had one thing that we wouldn’t have gotten by walking around by ourselves; the soundtrack to the movie playing while we sat and enjoyed the guided tour!

How do you solve a problem like Maria?
The first stop was at the Abby where the real Maria and Julie Andrews tried to become a nun. Unfortunately the Abby is a working Abby, so nobody is allowed inside. It is situated on top of a hill overlooking the city and was used only as an over-head shot for the movie, but was replicated exactly in Hollywood for the scenes shot inside.

Do-Re-Mi-Fa-So-La-Te-Do
Next stop was the Von Trapp family house. The inside of the house you see in the movie was a set built in Hollywood, but all scenes shot outside next to the house were in Salzburg. They actually used three different houses for different scenes. The famous scene of the kids in the boat on the lake in the backyard of the house in Salzburg and we got out of our little bus to walk around for a bit (that scene was only filmed once because little Grettel didn’t know how to swim. Julie Andrews was supposed to catch her as the boat tipped over, but she fell backwards instead of forwards, so Grettel sank to the bottom of the lake, and someone had to fish her out. She was terrified and refused to shoot again, so they used the first take). I basically jumped out of my skin at the sight of the house because not only was it gorgeous, but as a little girl I dreamed of living there. I was home!

I am 16 Going on 17
The infamous gazebo in the movie where Liesel and Rolf sing to each other and skip around and dance on benches was moved to a little park in Salzburg. Apparently couples would go to the house where the gazebo was filmed and would make a bit too much noise, um, “singing to each other” so it was moved to a park and locked. Kimmy and I thought it was only appropriate to take a picture frolicking in front of it to recreate the part when they jumped from bench to bench. Liesel and Rolf got nothing on us.

The Hills Are Alive With the Sound of Music
After the gazebo we took a long drive through the lake district where you have an amazing view of gorgeous lakes, breathtaking snowy mountains and the place where you see Maria running through the hills singing The Sound of Music. They had to film that scene over and over again because the wind from the helicopter kept knocking Julie Andrews over.

I Must Have Done Something Good
After Maria and the Captain fall in love, they agreed to get married. In real life, they were married in the Abby where Maria failed miserably at being a nun, but it was too small to film the wedding scene for the movie. They used a church in the lake district for this scene and that was the final stop on our tour. Of course I walked down the aisle as Maria did and seriously couldn’t believe I was there. It was very surreal to be walking down the aisle that I was so familiar with but have never seen. Who needs caffeine when you have the Von Trapp church making you jump up and down? We ended the tour singing So long, Farewell and got dropped off at the train station to head back to Vienna.

The next day we had a mid-afternoon train to catch to Berlin, so we spent the morning on our amazing hill overlooking the city. We really wanted to take advantage of the fact that we had a private ice skating rink with the best view of Austria, so we decided that’s how we would say goodbye to Vienna. I used to be a pretty decent figure skater back in the days of my Nancy Kerrigan obsession and I guess I thought I still had that triple axel in me. Clearly I was wrong. The ice was a bit bumpy and was not very well taken care of, so while showing off my gold-medal moves, I tripped, fell, and then that was the end of my left arm. Somehow falling on my wrists, my elbow decided to get injured. I have no idea what happened, but for the next 2 days, I can swear to you I had a broken elbow. It was physically impossible to lift my arm, turn my arm or do simple tasks like put on my jacket, or put my hair in a ponytail. Let’s just say, lots of tears were shed and there were a lot of random screams in the middle of the night when I would accidently turn over onto my left side. Since then, I have gained more movement in my arm, but it still hurts like a you-know-what, and I still can’t sleep on it. Who knows what I did to it, but it’s not going to keep me from any Europe adventures, so Berlin, here I come!