Passau and Salzburg

Friday October 28

(If you’re following along, I forgot a good story about monks trying to kill St. Benedict that I added to the Krems/Abbey post…check back to yesterday’s post for details.)

Who made our schedule?! (We did….)  We were  not that excited when we learned that it would be a 2.5 hour bus trip back into Austria (and 2.5 hours back to the ship…) to visit Salzburg, but we left very foggy weather and found it sunny and near 70 in Salzburg so we were all good! They keep reminding us that this is very unusual for October. Global warming working in our favor again (at least temporarily).  Spectacular day today!

Today we visited some sites where The Sound of Music was filmed. The outdoor shots were filmed in Salzburg; the indoor shots in Hollywood. It was scheduled for 6 weeks but took 11 because it rains so much in Salzburg (120 days/year). FYI the gazebo scene (16 going on 17) was actually fake rain!

Here is Pamela reinacting the Do Re Me song at this fountain. The rest of the song was between the statues (too crowded!) 

Some trivia: when the Von Trapp family escaped over that mountain in the distance in the movie, they DID cross a border…but the border beyond that mountain is Germany! Not far from Hitlers’s Eagles Nest. Dramatic license. 

This is the home of Christian Doppler who developed the Doppler Effect that we know from the weather channel. 

This is known as the Bridge of Locks but the actual name is the Marko Feingold bridge, named after a Holocaust survivor of 3 concentration camps. Lovers come to place their initials on a lock, lock it on the bridge and throw the key into the river to ensure everlasting love. It’s not exactly everlasting because they have to remove approx 1 ton of locks each year from the bridge or it would weigh down the fences. 😂

This coffee shop, Cafe Tomassino, is 300 years old; they are said to have 150 kinds of cake! A married couple inherited the coffee shop decades ago when women were not allowed in coffee houses. The wife decided that wouldn’t do and opened the second floor of the shop for women. Many other coffee houses followed suit. (One woman CAN make a difference! 💪)

And of course, then we saw this:

This is the birthplace of Mozart. His father Leopold was also a talented musician but a better teacher. He literally wrote the book on learning the violin which is still used in Universities today. Both Wolfgang and his sister had talent. Leopold wanted them to be famous. This was before TicToc and You Tube so his option was to travel with them so they could be heard. We learned that Wolfgang’s first concert was in Vienna at age 6 for the Empress. I’d say Dad was also good at PR and marketing. The rest is history. They sell everything Mozart here!

The streets are lined with lots of shops and restaurants and statues and monuments. 

 

Maria’s “I have Confidence” song was filmed here. The real Maria von Trapp had a cameo appearance in that scene.

 

We had lunch and were treated to several selections from The Sound of Music from this group.

Many of the mountains are dirt because they used all the stones to build the town. 

Some more shots from the town. 

Our guide, David, complete with Lederhosen. 

We met back by the Lock bridge before getting back on the bus and Dave had a brief brush with power. He did not let it go to his head!

We passed Canola flowers on our drive to be made into Canola oil. Who knew?

German night for dinner on the ship. 

Tomorrow is our last day: Munich