Stop #3 on the European Vacation with my mom was Salzburg. For those of you who aren't up on your movie musical trivia, Salzburg is where The Sound of Music was set and filmed. This is a city that's really into that fact--there's a whole tourist industry that's popped up around it.
Our hotel had a whole station devoted to playing The Sound of Music, over and over and over. First, they played it all the way through, and then they did a "Best of" version, that only had the musical numbers. Then they did a little interview with some of the still-alive cast members, and repeated the whole process. This hotel also had The Sound of Music theme rooms--decorated with pictures from the movie and the same furnishings as rooms in the movie.
The keystone of the tourist industry, however, is The Sound of Music bus tour. They drive you around the city, pointing out all the places from the movie. And then you sing. When a random Australian tourist told us about it, I swore up and down we weren't getting anywhere near it. The Sound of Music is cheesy; I do not do cheesy. And I definitely don't do singing in public. Especially if it's going to be cheesy singing. That sounds like hell to me.
And yet, what could be more ridiculous than something called The Sound of Music Bus Tour? I may not like cheesy or singing, but I do like ridiculous. And so we went. And it was, in fact, ridiculous. A greyhound bus filled with The Sound of Music-loving women and the men they had dragged along. A corny joke-filled tour guide named Peter and a bus driver named Markus who sounded like a muppet. 100 tourists trying to re-enact the "dancing in a gazebo" scene from the movie. A song about a marionette goatherd falling in love. Lots of singing.
Our hotel had a whole station devoted to playing The Sound of Music, over and over and over. First, they played it all the way through, and then they did a "Best of" version, that only had the musical numbers. Then they did a little interview with some of the still-alive cast members, and repeated the whole process. This hotel also had The Sound of Music theme rooms--decorated with pictures from the movie and the same furnishings as rooms in the movie.
The keystone of the tourist industry, however, is The Sound of Music bus tour. They drive you around the city, pointing out all the places from the movie. And then you sing. When a random Australian tourist told us about it, I swore up and down we weren't getting anywhere near it. The Sound of Music is cheesy; I do not do cheesy. And I definitely don't do singing in public. Especially if it's going to be cheesy singing. That sounds like hell to me.
And yet, what could be more ridiculous than something called The Sound of Music Bus Tour? I may not like cheesy or singing, but I do like ridiculous. And so we went. And it was, in fact, ridiculous. A greyhound bus filled with The Sound of Music-loving women and the men they had dragged along. A corny joke-filled tour guide named Peter and a bus driver named Markus who sounded like a muppet. 100 tourists trying to re-enact the "dancing in a gazebo" scene from the movie. A song about a marionette goatherd falling in love. Lots of singing.
(Above) The "Do-Re-Mi" song was filmed in the Mirabelle Gardens. The Von Trapp children skip around the Unicorn Fountain you can see in the picture, and then they do some sort of skippy dance to the top of the flight of stairs that this picture was taken from.(Below) Our tour guide Peter making bad puns as we admire the lake house where The SOund of Music was filmed.
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