It was Christmas Day, 1988, when I first watched The Sound of Music. I was four years old. I saw the stunning vistas, the gorgeous city streets and those words in the opening credits: ‘Salzburg, Austria, in the last Golden Days of the Thirties’. I was hooked. No, not hooked…obsessed. I watched the film over, and over, and over again, until I knew every word. I could still recite the whole film to you now if you asked me. Every single time I told myself that I would get to visit Salzburg some day. I didn’t actually believe it to be honest. Travelling the world was a dream that happened to other people but not to me, I didn’t even have a passport until I was twenty.
Then, things changed. I realised that, actually, there was nothing stopping me from seeing the world. From seeing all the places I had dreamed of for so long. I could even…*gasp*…go to Salzburg. Why not? Why not live out all my crazy fantasies? And so it was that I planned an epic Interrail trip in the summer of 2008; fourteen days, fourteen cities, eight countries, starting in France, ending in Poland. Then smack dab in the middle? Salzburg, Austria. It was one of the best trips I’ve ever planned and oh, there’s been a lot. Every day was an adventure, every day was filled with history, sunshine and new, incredible places to explore. The best part about it? Salzburg, the city of my dreams for twenty years, not only lived up to all of those expectations, but miraculously exceeded them.
Salzburg is truly a golden city. It’s scenic, stunning, friendly and incredibly clean…even the air felt of a different quality to anywhere else I’ve visited. There’s a purity about the whole city and a timeless feel to the streets which, rather handily for me, meant that I could spent my whole two days there pretending that it actually was the last Golden Days of the Thirties. If you catch it on a gorgeous summer’s day, I genuinely can’t imagine there being a more beautiful place on this planet. The pure blue Salzach River, the surrounding Alps, the Baroque architecture, the castle, high atop a hill, looking over the whole city. It all combines to create the sort of magic Disney World can only dream of and I love Disney.
Of course, I was there because of The Sound of Music and as a result, my time there was spent fulfilling my lifelong ambitions of dancing around fountains, wistfully singing in Mozartplatz and various other ridiculously exciting activities. Because my husband had absolutely no interest in joining one of the tours , I designed my own tour, which involved walking approximately five miles in 35C temperatures and oh yes, he was made to regret his decision. As long as you do plenty of planning, most of the film’s sights can be reached fairly easily, either by walking around the city centre (Nonnberg Abbey, Mirabel Gardens) or on short bus rides (the Von Trapp House- now a music school, the gazebo at Hellbrun Castle, and Leopoldskron Castle). Not far down the road from Hellbrun Castle and just a couple of miles outside of the city, you can also take a cable car up Mount Untersberg, escape route of the Von Trapp family, from where there is an incredible view of the surrounding mountains and towns. As well as being must-sees on the travelling lists of Sound of Music fans, most of these places are actually tourist sights in their own right; Hellbrun Castle is a particularly popular excursion.
However, believe it or not, Salzburg is not all about The Sound of Music; this is the birthplace of Mozart we’re talking about, after all. You can visit Mozart’s house on Getreidegasse, one of the oldest streets in Salzburg and despite its lack of connection to any scene in The Sound of Music it is my personal favourite part of the city. Culturally, there are theatres, music halls, museums, churches and abbeys galore in the Old Town, which as a whole, was listed as a World Heritage Site in 1996. Just wandering around, exploring alleyways and parks, taking in the beauty of your surroundings, is delightful enough in a city such as this. In keeping with the general elegance of the place, the atmosphere, even at the height of tourist season, is relaxed and peaceful. I may have fallen in love with it because of a film, but my adoration is all based in reality now; Salzburg is a little slice of heaven on earth.
