By ERNIE NEUFELD, Weyburn Review Associate Publisher
"Julie Andrews did not climb up that mountain; she went up via the funicular," our local tour guide smilingly told us as she walked us through the beautiful little (population 147,000) Austrian city of Salzberg, drawing to our attention points of interest and renown. In fact, we were standing on the very ground on which several important scenes of "The Sound of Music" had been filmed about three decades ago.
Since this was where Austria's Baron Von Trapp and his gifted family escaped from the Nazis, who had been set on installing the baron as a submarine commander in the German navy, her explanation was a natural way of bypassing the inevitable question.
You have all seen the movie starring Andrews, and have heard the wonderful songs created for it by Rogers and Hammerstein, so you don't need me to recreate either here. But guide Veronica did confide in us that while the tale was substantially true, a few parts had been changed to intensify the desirable suspense. The escape to Switzerland, I understood, was not quite as dramatic as portrayed by Hollywood.
This was not the purpose of the visit to the Alpine (or near-Alpine) city, but as our tour had been advertised as a visit to the music cities of Europe, "The Sound of Music" fit in very nicely.
Prime reason for its selection was that Salzburg was the birthplace of Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, and since its inauguration in 1930, has been the home of the renowned annual Salzburg Festival.
A must for a stop in this city, naturally, is a visit to the centuries-old house in which the musical genius Mozart was born.
While the great musician died impoverished and his exact burial place is not known, it was pointed out that he was not born in poverty. In fact, the family occupied one or more floors of a spacious house at a time when most families were crowded into a single room.
In spite of relative affluence, of course, chickens were raised right in the house (the era's fast food?), and the chamber pot was emptied every morning from a window onto the narrow street below.
"Salz", by the way, is the German (Austria's language) word for salt, so Salzburg ("Salt City" or "Salt Castle") is named for the discovery there 3,000 to 4,000 years ago of salt in massive quantities. It was then so rare and precious it commonly was called "white gold." Early miners of the valuable mineral were Celts from the British Isles. Romanians were also earlier settlers.
The city of Salzburg occupies both sides of the Salz River; one side is called "the old city" and the other side "the new city." Buildings in the new city may be only a few hundred years old, while the old city has buildings constructed when Columbus set sail and much earlier. It is the fourth in size of Austrian cities, but the second most important.
A strong Roman Catholic city, the See of Salzberg was founded circa 700 A.D. by St. Rupert, and now has over 100 churches, mostly R.C.: beautiful structures of elegant classic design. Many of the bells chime every quarter-hour, discouraging lie-abeds.
We visited also a small city near the mountains, of no military importance, bombed with substantial loss of life in the closing weeks of the war, and were shown a touching memorial as a reminder. The bombing was attributed to the city's nearness to Adolf Hitler's mountain hideout of Berchtesgaden. Tragic to be sure. On the other hand, boys from this little town probably had been bombing London recently.
It's good that was in the past, and that it is now possible,
with little apparent bitterness, to visit these pleasant, beautiful
cities in a wonderful country of friendly people.
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