Salzburg, Austria & Burchtesgaden, Germany

*Apologies for the delay of blogging! The whole month of October has flown by!

GRUSS GOTT (:

On Friday, October 5th, the group of us below made a day trip to Salzburg, Austria. After experiencing The Sound of Music Tour through the filming locations in the mountains and city, we ventured out to the border of Germany to visit Hitler's Eagle Nest. 

Long story short, we paid to take the first bus connection to get there and missed the second one. At this point, I didn't want to waste the bus fee and we were in Burchtesgaden, Germany! I'd never heard of it, but I thought, "why not explore?" and thankfully, so did Lexie, Molly and Meredith! So, we kept walking uphill in the direction of the beautiful mountains, skirts, dresses, Toms and all. Little, private owned farmland trails presented themselves, one after the other, and we found ourselves on top of a mountain with a breath-taking view. This was one of the best moments I've had traveling. Therefore, my advice: when you see a mountain, climb it. It's a blessing. Psalm 121:1-2.

SALZBURG 

THE SOUND OF MUSIC TOUR

The garden from the house in the back was the garden used for the Von Trapp family's house in filming! Also, the scene with Maria and the children falling out of the boat was shot on this lake. It happened to be freezing and they had to shoot it 3 times. The third time, Julie Andrews accidentally fell  and knocked all of the children out and they decided to keep this take for the movie because it looked natural. Little Gretl almost drowned in this incident and that actress, to this day, has a fear of deep waters.

This is near the birthplace of Mozart in the mountains of Salzburg!

 Below is the church where the wedding scene was filmed! (And pictures from inside of it!)

 creepy skeleton saints in the church.. I wonder if these were shown in the movie too??

This is the best apfelstrudel and ice cream that you can find in ALL of Austria!! YUM.

 This is a famous hat. The bus driver in the movie wore it. I wore it. Therefore, I am famous too. 

BURCHTESGADEN, GERMANY 

 This is a sweet, little German cow we met when hiking through a farmer's land to go up the mountain. He is one spoiled cow because the view below belongs to him.

Not only did we find a mountain; we found a secret waterfall/creek going down the mountain!

^ hahahaha. This has a story. So, when the group got split up (some going back to Salzburg, others hiking the mountain), Sam had Meredith's eurail pass to ride the train back home.. YOU DO NOT WANT TO GET CAUGHT RIDING THE TRAIN WITHOUT YOUR EURAIL. We realized this when we were on the mountain and we had no way of getting in touch with Sam.. So, we came up with plans A through D of how we would pull off getting Meredith home. Our resolution: laying down all of the seats in our train compartment to make it into a huge pallet that we would all lay across while Mere hid on the ground under them the WHOLE 4 HOUR RIDE BACK. It worked! Meredith McFarlin might be one of the BEST sports I've ever met in my whole life. 

No matter how hard the mountain you're hiking may be, the view at the end will always be worth it!

With love, 

Lacy