"The Hills Are Alive, with the Sounds of Music..."

A few weeks ago I got to go on a 'Sound of Music' tour with some of the other student on my program.  We had already seen most the locations that had been used in Salszurg (the horse fountain, the gazebo, the Mirabell Gardens, etc.) so this was a tour of locations outside of Salzburg in the surrounding countryside and towns.  We spend most of the ride singing along with the soundtrack and explaining what was happening to the one person on the tour who hadn't seen the movie yet! This was one of my favorite days in Austria and it had by far the most beautiful views I have ever seen.

One thing to know about Austria is even their farms are beautiful.  All the farms are small and family run, and there is a big emphasis on preserving the land and not over using it.

This is Dragon Wall Mountain.  There is a local legend that a dragon once lived on the mountain and would fly to the town of Mondsee (Man Lake) to eat people when it got hungry.  One time the dragon could find no one to eat and was flying back to his mountain angry.  He was so angry that he crashed into the mountain and created a hole in it (the hole was on the other side of the mountain and was impossible to get a picture of).  Our tour guide says that that we should learn from the dragon and never drive when we are angry (or hungry!).

This was a river running through the town of Mondsee to the lake.

Mondsee is one of the biggest lakes in the are and has a total of three towns and at least five mountains surrounding it.

There was a small chain-link fence set up next to the lake where people where placing love locks on it.  I asked our tour guide why it was there and he said he didn't know, it hadn't been there last week.

Dragon Wall Mountain and Mondsee (as well as some ducks and other birds I have never seen before).

There was a small festival going on in Mondsee and we got to see some traditional dancing.  This stage was set up in front of the church where the wedding scene in 'Sound of Music' was shot. The church is at least three times smaller in real life than it is in the movie.   Part of Mondsee was also shown in he opening credits of the movie.

We were only able to see the actual trees that the children climbed on from a distance but this road was also used in the movie.

We then took a 20 minute bus ride up a mountain to get this amazing view of Mondsee and the mountains.  We were afraid it would start raining before we got to the top but the weather was perfect for the view.

This is the most breathtaking view I have ever seen and I don't think I will see anything more beautiful before I die.

Natalia and myself enjoying the view!

It then started to storm, really bad.  We had to drive really slow for a while and weren't able to get out of the bus.  This allowed for some amazing fog covered views!

You can't see it but the lake is really big and there are tons of mountains surrounding it.

After 45 minutes of rain the skies cleared up and BANG!!!!!!!!   RAINBOW!!  We pulled over on the side of the road to get out and get some pictures of the beautiful rainbow and mountain.  I was blown away by the beauty of the rainbow and the reminder that is serves us.  We have a powerful, loving, and faithful God who continually blesses us with more beauty than we could ever imagine.  

Final stop on the tour was the location where the children fell into the water when they are waving to Captain Von Trapp.  This villa wasn't used in movie at all so the patio you see is not the one from the movie.