An Education In Copenhagen: "You Skip Like Maria. I'll Make Pictures."

So after a long day of rearranging our plans and visiting the Leopold Museum, Hillary and I arrived in Salzburg around 7. We encountered out first dilemma as soon as we got off the train. We could not figure out how to buy a ticket for the bus. After debating for a bit, we asked a young girl who spoke English, and she told us to buy it on the bus. We tried to speak with the bus driver, but he just said he could not speak English and refused to talk with us. We stayed on the bus until our stop without paying for a ticket! It’s not something I am proud of, but the bus driver refused to communicate with us. While we were on the bus, we had our first chance to see beautiful and magical Salzburg. The mountains are incredibly close. It was like we were in a fairytale land. We arrived at our hostel and got settled in our room.

Day 1: The Hills Are Alive With the Sound of Music

Salzburg is where The Sound of Music was filmed and the real story took place about the Von Trapp family. As Hillary and I were waiting in the lobby for the tour to pick us up, all of a sudden a man in a green hat with a red feather and green vest walks into the hostel. Yes, that was our tour guide. He looked like one of the Von Trapp children from the movie. We went on the tour with five other girls in a van, driving through the hills of Salzburg and stopping at all of the sites where the movie was filmed. Hillary and I of course sat in front right next to the tour guide to get the best view and sing along with him. He was incredibly animated and led us through the entire soundtrack. He also seemed to really love his job. I mean, who wouldn’t want to live in Salzburg, take in the scenery every day leading tours while singing with Julie Andrews? One of my favorite parts was when we skipped through the hills, and our tour guide said, “You skip like Maria. I’ll make pictures.” He took pictures of each of us posing in front of the famous gazebo from “Sixteen Going on Seventeen” as well. That evening we watched The Sound of Music at our hostel. They play it every night at 8. Hillary and I had a great time laughing, crying, and singing (Yes, there were young children in the room watching it with us and laughing at how much we loved the film.)

We met a girl from Colombia at our hostel who laughed at us for being so “American” when going on The Sound of Music tour. She said, “Americans always want to visit, and they are so excited about going on The Sound of Music tour.”

Later in the day, we explored more of Salzburg and found a beautiful park. We decided to test our gymnastics skills and go on the playground. Well, we are definitely not as flexible as we used to be. We had a strange encounter with some local teenagers. They came up to us and asked if we were American. They proceeded to imitate how Americans speak with some kind of harsh southern accent, and I kindly told them, “That is not the way that all Americans speak.”