Day 47 A tragic tour that ended in the snow

Though we are not normally fans of ‘the bus tour’ we temporarily broke our rules and joined our guide Gunter on Salzburg’s famous Sound of Music tour. This really was a tour for Sound of Music tragics. We visited the gazebo where the Captain declared his love for Maria, we looked across the lake to the house where most of the exterior scenes were shot, we drove past the ancient abbey where Maria almost became a nun and we even peered up into the hills to see the patch of green grass where Julie Anthony spun around singing the opening song. In between each stop we climbed back onto our coach were Gunter filled us with trivia about the movie as well as other bits of assorted trivia. For example did you know that Dubai has the cheapest petrol in the world? In between stops, which included a toboggan ride, and more trivia, Gunter marched up and down the bus insisting, that we join him in singing along with the musical’s soundtrack distorting through the bus’s very bad CD player. Many of us obeyed our Captain Gunter out of terror. However a small number of our group, mostly young women, sang every song with the enthusiasm and dedication of a 48-year-old male Monty Python tragic singing the Lumberjack Song.

We finished the tour around 2pm and independently picked up a local bus, which took us the 30 minutes to a cable car, which climbed one of Salzburg’s surrounding mountains. This cable car travelled for a distance of 3kms and climbed to a height of over 1800 metres above sea level. From there we continued to climb on foot for about 45 minutes through numerous patches of snow to a further summit which had a spectacular 360-degree view of the surrounding mountains and valleys far below.

Singing ‘Do Re Mi’ on a bus with Gunter was unusual. Trudging through snow on top of a mountain, in shorts and sandals, in 30-degree heat, was surreal.

We climbed every mountain – tomorrow we will forge every stream and follow every rainbow as we continue to follow our dream.
Ohhhh – how tragic can you get!