The Hills Have Lives

The Mirabel Gardens, Salzburg Cathedral, and the Festung

One of the least unique things about Laura and I as a couple is our feeling about The Sound of Music. She likes it, and I don't. Granted, I haven't seen it in 10 years, so maybe I will find new things about it that my more mature cinematic self can dislike.

But I'm betting that none of those things, new or old, will be the scenery. We decided to stretch our German Railpass to the limit, and actually took a train all the way to Salzburg, just across the Austrian border. We were lucky to catch another beautiful day, and Salzburg is a nice place to catch beautiful days. If you happen to be an unmarried male, you may not know that Salzburg is the setting for The Sound of Music, but I'm guessing everyone else knew already (my mom has confessed to me that she took German in college for the express purpose of one day going to Austria to become more like Julie Andrews).

Nuns, but no Sister Maria

But beyond all that Von Trapp yodeling, there's quite a bit to Salzburg. Granted, we started with the Mirabell Gardens, and we had to wait in line behind several skipping couples until we could get a free shot at the infamous archway of foliage.

Jumping instead of skipping

You might think that I as a connoisseur of music history would be interested in Salzburg because it was Mozart's birthplace. Interesting, true, but not enough so to shell out €10 to tour his old house. To the extent that child geniuses exist at all, I think Mendelssohn was as good if not a better example of it than Mozart, who was trained like a machine from birth. And Mozart wasn't actually that fond of Salzburg, although the city makes lots of tourist money off of him today. The coolest musical thing I saw there was the cathedral, which is huge and old like many European cathedrals, but also has four separate organs flanking its sanctuary (which, the acoustician in me would like to point out, would be hard to keep together if they were all playing since they all face away from each other and the reverberation time must be at least 5 seconds) which look pretty intimidating.

Laura looking prim and proper

But the most worthwhile thing in Salzburg, at least by my estimate, is the huge fortress ('Festung') on the hill in the middle of the city. It claims to be Europe's largest fortification, "possibly the most beautiful," whatever that means. Yes, it costs some money to get in, but it costs less if you climb the hill yourself rather than paying for a lift, which makes you feel better about paying to get in because you've already saved so much money.

The hills are alive - that's probably why they built the Festung

What's so cool about the Festung, you ask? Well, for one thing it's huge, imposing, and has a great view of the beautiful valley, river, and hills. You really need to climb to the very top of this one and catch the breeze on a sunny day - okay, I admit I may have burst into "The Hills Are Alive..." once or twice, but I don't know any more than the first line (when I was a kid, we used to sing it as "The Hills Are Alive and They're Gonna Eat You!") or so.

In addition, the Festung has a golden hall whence the archbishop ruled, and it's made of ornate wood and gold overlay - like Medusil in The Two Towers. Maybe I've exposed too much of my innate nerdiness in this post already, but a good appreciation for Tolkien and epic fantasy will go a long way toward an appreciation of European history - lots of majestic buildings, vistas, and weapons of death. The Festung also has a museum of medieval weapons which is a bit grisly but informative.

Braxton gets corrupted by sheer power in the Golden Hall

All in all, a city that lives up to its hype - don't come here for Mozart, come here for Salzburg. 7.5/10.0