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!

A Date With a Homophobe and a Mute

Waking up in my bed on the night train to look out the window and see Vienna, Austria was a sight I will never forget. So far each country we have been to on this trip, I have been to before when I was younger. I have never been to Austria before so when we got off the train It felt like I was seeing snow for the first time. We got to our hostel, which is GORGEOUS. It is on the top of a hill that overlooks the entire city and we have an ice skating rink! After we threw our stuff down, I felt the need to put braids in my hair (to get into the Austrian spirit?) before we took off to wander the city. As soon as we got to the centre of town, we went to the Stephansdom church which is an amazing building right in the middle of the city. We have slightly overdone the museums and sight-seeing, so we decided to skip out on going inside and just walked around instead. While walking around a man in a big red cape came up to us to try and sell us tickets to a Mozart concert complete with opera and ballet. We were intrigued and let him give us his clearly memorized speech. When he was done he said he would give us front row tickets for 55 euro each. We laughed and started to walk away. Before we got too far he quickly came after us and offered to give us two for the price of one. We agreed. As he was giving us the tickets, he asked us (in very broken English) if we wanted to meet him for coffee after the show. Neither one of us is very good at lying on the spot, so we just sort of smiled and giggled for a few minutes before he told us he would meet us at the subway station across the street from the venue which the concert was being held at. We really couldn’t say anything to him at this point because a) he just sold us the tickets so he knew we would be lying if we said we already had plans, and b) he probably wouldn’t have understood anything we said to him that didn’t involve simple English like, “hello, I have a dog.” After we left with our tickets Kimmy and I looked at each other and almost in unison said “that’s not happening”.

We walked around for the rest of the day under Vienna’s Christmas lights and taking in the atmosphere. It really is a beautiful city and I felt very familiar with it even on my first day there. We went back to our hostel to get dressed up for the first time since leaving home and it was a miracle either of us ended up looking the way we did since neither of us has brushed our hair in a month because we both forgot to pack brushes (knotted hair is like, totally in style these days, duh!). We went to the concert hall (which is where Mozart had his first public appearance) and enjoyed two hours of classical music, ballet and opera. I must say, I felt very grown up (and even more so because I actually enjoyed it!) It was an amazing evening and we had such a good time… until…

We realized that in order to get home, we needed to go to the subway station which our friend in the red cape said he would meet us at. I noticed that the show got out a half hour later than it was supposed to so we had high hopes that he would have forgotten about us by then. Just to be safe, we did a couple of “walk-bys” past the door to the station to have a quick peek in to see if he was waiting for us. No sign of red-caped man. Kimmy opened the door to the station and I pulled a James Bond and did a 180 with my imaginary gun and jumped through the door to see an empty station. Phew. He forgot about us. We weren’t out of the woods yet though, so we literally clung to each other as we tip-toed down the stairs to the tracks and we were actually jumpy whenever someone would turn the corner. While we were on the tracks waiting for the train we did a little victory dance because we were finally out of the woods. We wouldn’t have to make awkward conversation in broken English and German and we wouldn’t have to be scared by every stranger walking towards us. Hooray! And then it happened… The tap on my shoulder which I will have nightmares about for months. I heard a man attempting to say my name with a very thick accent. I ignored it and kept looking straight ahead. I heard it again. And I ignored it again. Then he said, “Kim?” We didn’t stand a chance at that point. We acknowledged his presence and he said, “do you remember me?” I said, “vaguely, we met a lot of people today” (this was the line that has made us randomly break out into hysterics all day today). At this point he motioned for his friend to come over and join us who had been standing about 15 feet away just staring at us while I attempted to morph myself into a bird so I could fly away. Just then the train came and we jumped on it… and they followed. We told them we hadn’t yet eaten dinner so we were going to say no to their kind offer for coffee, and we were going to get something to eat. They said they knew a great place for great beer so we should go with them there. “No, no. FOOD not BEER, we are hungry girls”. He replied, “Ah, yes, food. Drink few beers, you won’t be hungry anymore”. This is when I resorted to trying to hype up my cough and cold. I had been able to keep my cough to a minimum during the concert, and I was feeling pretty good, but desperate times call for desperate measures and I forced a few coughs to show them what a poor sick little girl I was and that I was not well enough for a night out. They acknowledged my cough, and then said “bar this way, follow me”. What gentlemen. We all sat down at a table and Kimmy and I ordered food and tried to make awkward conversation with one of these guys (only one could speak English, the other just stared at me. Literally. Just sat and stared at me. He didn’t say a single word, didn’t order food, didn’t attempt to listen to his wingman talking to Kimmy and I. He just sat and stared). At this point my fake cough turned into my real cough and I was literally miserable. I couldn’t even open my mouth to speak because I would end up coughing instead (that’s Karma for you I guess).

So here are the characters sitting at this table in Vienna:

Creepy Man #1 – 28 year old studying Business in Vienna who hates gay people (that should have been our signal to pretend we were lesbians so they would go away) and loves movies.

Creepy Man #2 – Man who sells concert tickets by wearing a red cape. He doesn’t speak English and likes to stare at me.

Joanna (no middle name) Nettelfield – Incapable of holding a broken conversation because of a cough, which is ruining her life.

Kimberly Kelly Spencer– Stuffs her face with French fries and attempts to humor Creepy Man #1 by asking him what time the subway stops running in Vienna.

When we finished eating they had a little secret conversation in German and then asked us if we wanted to go dancing. You have GOT to be kidding me guys! I’m sitting in front of you literally dying, nobody has said a word to each other in 4 minutes and 27 seconds, and Creepy Man #2 hasn’t blinked since the subway. No we don’t want to go dancing, and no I don’t want to give you my real email address, but, here, take this fake one (you really aren’t getting my real email address especially since you asked us out for a coffee but forced us to sit in a smoky bar instead while I can’t even enjoy my food because of a certain someone who doesn’t know that it’s impolite to stare!). But thank you Creepy Man #1 & #2. You have given us a night that we will never forget, even though we have already forgotten your names.