Sound of Music comes alive in Salzburg and Austrian Alps tour

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SALZBURG – The hills were alive with the Sound of Music – if a van load of tone-deaf tourists singing ‘Doe, a deer, a female deer’ qualifies as such.

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We were complete strangers from Canada and the U.S. before affable driver/guide Bruno collected us, but in no time we all warbled familiar tunes from the 1965 classic. Bruno timed Julie Andrews’ soundtrack with each film locale we passed or stopped at for pictures and a stroll.

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Approaching its 60th anniversary, winner of five Academy Awards and Hollywood’s highest-grossing picture for five years after its release, Sound of Music has captivated three generations, all represented the early summer day we set out through Salzburg and the Austrian Alps.

Bruno has been conducting ‘Bob’s Sound of Music Tour’ for many years, well-versed in both the Broadway play/movie plot and the real story of the Von Trapp family. Maria, the role made iconic by Andrews, was indeed a teacher from a convent, asked to tutor one of widowed naval captain Georg von Trapp’s seven children, before they fell in love and married. He truly was an uber-authoritative father, who summoned his kids with a whistle.

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The family’s eventual escape to America when Hitler annexed Austria in 1938 wasn’t as dramatic as the film, and Bruno is upfront about much more fact-versus-film fiction. But locals now embrace the thousands of annual visitors who start their SOM pilgrimage in Salzburg, a thousand-year-old settlement.

Its medieval ‘Altstadt,’ echoing with many church bells, is a UNESCO World Heritage Site. It includes the house where Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart was born, now a museum dedicated to the composer.

Salzburg still hosts the summer music festival where the real Von Trapps performed and the city preserved the gazebo where teenaged Liesl and her young beau Rolf sang ‘Sixteen Going On Seventeen,’ moving it to the beautiful park at Hellbrunn Palace after residents near its film location were inundated with shutterbugs.

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It was originally next to Schloss Leopoldskron, a royal residence now an upscale hotel with a statue of Andrews, the setting for many interior/exterior SOM scenes. The placid pond in front, with ducks and other wildlife, is where Julie and the kids tip over in a boa. That required several takes as five-year-old Kym Karath (Gretl) couldn’t swim and scuba divers were stationed below for her safety.

From Salzburg we drove up beautiful winding roads to the peaks and open pastures where a couple of Julie’s other famous scenes took place, playing guitar with the children’s chorus and, of course, her opening number. The latter required much dexterity on her part as the helicopters ferrying the cameras got too close a few times, the blast from their rotors knocking her down.

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We paused for a drink in the village of Mondsee, near the entrance of the medieval abbey seen in Maria’s wedding to the captain, then the beautiful overlook of St. Gilgen, where Mozart’s mother was born, nestled in the mountains on the shore of Wolfgangsee. We spotted the 130-year-old tram slowly making its way to the peak of 5,849-feet (1,783-metre) Schafberg Mountain, the steepest steam cog railway in Austria, a safe trek that hikers can also attempt.

Our tour ended back in Salzburg at the Mirabell Gardens, another familiar SOM setting where the family hops, skips and jumps around the flowers, hedges and the Pegasus Fountain.

IF YOU GO

Salzburg can be combined with a visit to Austria or Bavaria, reachable from Munich, Germany, by train in 90 minutes or two-and-a-half hours from Vienna. The Sound of Music (bobstours.com) runs twice daily at 9 a.m. and 2 p.m., for four hours and costing about C$100 for an adult ticket, less for students and kids.

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