CLIMB EVERY MOUNTAIN!! FORD EVERY STREAM! You have no choice. You cannot escape The Sound of Music. I didn't go on the official "Sound of Music Tour" which costs about 40 bucks, but let's face it: when you go to Salzburg, you ARE on the "Sound of Music" Tour. It is everywhere, in every view. Songs go through your head ALL the time no matter what. You are IN the Sound of Music. You see the magnificent abbeys and churches and you think, "How Do You Solve a Problem Like Maria?" You see the view from the fortress, or the fountain (above right) and you think, "Do, a Deer, a Female Deer..." Then you go to the Hellbrun garden and see the gazebo where she made out with Christopher Plummer and you think, "You are Sixteen Going on Seventeen." You can't stop it. Every song is in your head all the time, drowning out Mozart. Salzburg may be Mozart's hometown, but even he, the greatest musical genius who ever lived, is completely obscured by the von Trapps, eidelweiss, goat marionettes, the countess, dirndls, bicycles, nuns sabotaging Nazi cars, and on and on. I finally just surrendered to it. We began to re-enact scenes, discuss our favorite characters, and sing all the songs. Just be warned if you ever go to Salzburg: if it can happen to me it can happen to you.

But on to Mozart. There he is on the right. We started the day in Salzburg with the Viva! Mozart tour, which turned out to be very sparse and disappointing. They seemed to be grasping at straws with items like Mozart's clothesbrush. The guide told us nothing we didn't already know (Daniel would have said, "She means well.")and, indeed, got into an argument almost immediately with our professor over the original KV1 manuscript, which was pretty exciting to see in person. It was pretty much the best (and only worthwhile) thing in the entire exhibit. Anyway, so she said that Wolfgang had actually written it himself, at age 6 or 8 or whatever. Dick just kept shaking his head, and said Leopold wrote it down for him, obviously. Then everyone started making comments about whether it was Mozart or his Dad, and looking at the handwriting. The guide kept pointing out how the handwriting was really "childlike" and comparing it to later Mozart music writing. Someone suggested it might have been Nannerl who wrote it down; she would have been about 12 or so. Her liqueur is being sold all over town, by the way, in cute little bottles shaped like violins. I'll try to bring some back to show you all. At the end of the tour, they had a dark room where you just sat and listened to the E flat quintet. That was the second best part, and made me cry a little bit (for reasons which known only to a few readers).

We saw three more Baroque churches, which I will comment on separately in my next post.

Via St. Peter's cemetery (where the ever-present von Trapps hid out from the Nazis until Christopher Plummer said, "You'll never be one of them" and Rolf started blowing his whistle) we then went out to dinner at the oldest restaurant in Europe, the Stiftskeller St. Peter, in business since 803! Glen came to mind, of course, because Charlemagne ate here!

Can you believe it? Here I am sitting in a restaurant where Charlemagne ate! That gal is called Heather, and she teaches elementary music at a little school in North Carolina. It was Charlemagne who made Salzburg into an archbishopric, appointing the first prince archbishop as one of his vassi dominici. The guy was called Arno and maybe they ate right at this table! They probably did!

Salzburg was an independent principate all the way up to Mozart's time, but was not a member of the group that actually elected the Holy Roman Emperor (as you know, Glen).

Finally, at the end of the day, we took a funicular up the side of the mountain to the fortress, where the sun was setting over Salzburg, there was a thunderstorm brewing with flashes of lighting, and the Hills were truly Alive.