As the Wind Blows

The strains of “. . these are a few of my favourite things . . “ warbled over the radio in the hotel lobby reminding me that I was heading off to Salzburg the next day. And really, it seems that the Sound of Music is a huge part of Salzburg’s tourism. Even the postcards and souvenirs have The Sound of Music written all over them!

Music must have always been a part of the town’s history, because Mozart was born in Salzburg. Like the Sound of Music you can’t escape Mozart in Salzburg because there’s references to him everywhere. Particularly with the MozartKugels (chocolate balls). While praline, nougat and marzipan are a few of my favourite things, when they’re all wrapped up in a chocolate, well let’s just say the chocolate just overpowers everything else. I should have attempted to find the original store, they might not have been so chocolately in there. Oh well, at least I can say with confidence that the chocoholics out there will love MozartKugels!

Salzburg is a quaint little town and reminded me a lot of Prague – it even has a castle on top of a hill, but while Prague has managed to retain a lot of its old world charm, Salzburg has changed. Just by re-watching the 1965 film classic (in order to caption my photos and to see if I did walk through any of the film locations), I can tell it's changed. But then again, most of the film shots were of the roofs and towers and not of the town itself making it look older than what it was. The magic of cinema! And tourism Salzburg helps keep that magic alive with horse drawn carriages, the old fashion farmer's market, classical music being played in the piazzas and tour guides dressed in traditional costumes.

Away from the city of Salzburg, Salzkammergut the Lakes District of the state of Salzburg, is absolutely beautiful! The waters of the lakes are so long and clear, the mountains are so large and diverse with extremely sheer cliff faces to extremely dense forests, and the mansions so grand that you really feel quite small in comparison to your surroundings.

While our guide kept reminding us that this wasn’t a Sound of Music tour, (while probably hoping that we would book ourselves onto one,) he kept pointing out movie locations as the bus driver steered us along the mountain paths. Of course one hill looks like every other hill, and one mansion surrounded by other large houses as well as one particular point on a lake is hard to spot on a moving bus. But I’m sure in slow motion, I will have seen quite a few Sound of Music scenes that day. All I can say though, is the part of the state of Salzburg that I saw is breathtakingly beautiful.