It was the top destination for many of the girls that I traveled with this past week to see this tour. I on the other hand hadn't thought much about it. Yes, I've seen (and enjoyed) the movie, and adore the music, but I don't have the fanatical love for the Sound of Music the way the others did (though I may now...). Perhaps I'll blame this on the fact that my introduction to the musical came from when the Vicksburg Theater Guild did "SoM" as a main stage several years ago and not the movie itself. But of course, it's one of those things you can only see in Austria--- and it just happened to be in the same city that Mozart was born in--- so I was certainly game to go. My only regret is that I didn't get to see the movie right before I went, so I' was struggling to remember everything.
We saw the back and front (2 different places) of the Von Trapp Villa, the gazebo, the church where they married, the path with all the trees lining it, and much more. The highlight of the tour perhaps was up in the mountains at the town of Mounsee (where the church is located). Appel Strudel, anyone? The vanilla ice cream is legit homemade and the hot vanilla cream is utterly amazing (and unique to Mounsee, so I'm told). The best meal of the weekend, however was at Brauerei Gaststatte in Vienna. There were the boiled parsley potatoes (absolutely drenched in butter) and Viennese Schnitzel (veal) with a cranberry sauce. The sauce is by far what made the Schnitzel to fabulous. It wasn't sweet at all, but very tart and made the breading of the veal fantastic. So I went to Austria and had "crisp apple strudel" and "schnitzel with(out) noodles."
After the Sound of Music tour, and our walk through the gardens where we recreated nearly dance imaginable from the Do Re Mi song, we had lunch (ok side note here, I had a seafood salad that had octopus in it. Fulfilled that need, no need to do it again) I finally got to see my attraction, Mozart's birthplace! How utterly amazing is it to stand in the house where Mozart grew up and to see so much of his things including, get this, his concert Violin, the clavichord that he composed The Magic Flute on, and his fortepiano. I still can't get over this. I saw Mozart's fortepiano.
As sometimes happens, though my favorite part of the trip wasn't something I ever intended on seeing. It just happened to be mentioned by Meredith 
the night we arrived in Vienna. Hofburg Palace was home of the Hapsburg family for quite a time, until the deconstruction of the Austrian Empire after WWI, and is still used for governmental things today. I've never really payed attention to the Hapsburgs, though I knew vaguely that Marie Antoinette was one, but at the palace I was introduced to a fascinating individual, Empress Elisabeth. Have you ever heard of her? The first time I heard her mentioned (though I didn't realize it at the time) was at the hotel desk where we asked for directions, "you mean where Sissi lived?" the concierge asked. "um, I guess." Elizabeth was married to Franz Joseph and was Empress from 1856 until her assassination in Geneva in 1898. She's a bit of a tragic figure, a shy girl who married an emperor at 15 and inherited a role which she struggled to fill. She was frequented by bouts of depression and dealt with life by writing poetry (mostly about death and loneliness and lack of freedom) and obsessing over her beauty and physical health. After he son's suicide, she apparently dove into a depression that she never emerged from. She traveled constantly, often neglecting her children from the impression I got and estranging herself from her husband. Yet her daughter spoke lovingly of her many times and her husband did everything he could to make her happy. His only words upon hearing her assassination in Switzerland were, "you have no idea how much I loved this woman." It's breathtaking, or at least I, the romantic and historian, think so. One of these days I must get a biography on her. Museums have a tough job trying to tell you all about a person in an hour or less, sometimes I think they skip characteristics that can soften the harsh edges of a person's personality, and this may be one of those cases.
On another note, I finished another book this weekend, Anne Frank: The Diary of a Young Girl, which now makes Amsterdam available to me as a travel destination. I'm 2 for 2 on reading during the weekends and am kind of curious to know if I can keep reading one book per weekend. Maybe I'll try it and find out. In any case, I'm off to study for now. As always my pictures are here, I'm having difficulties and will continue to work on them for the rest of the day.
Tot Ziens!
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