Parking in Salzburg
Many hotels are located on streets which limit vehicle access. As a visitor you can drive to hotels and pensions in the Altstadt at anytime, even on streets which restrict vehicles. You may creep along at 5 miles an hour among crowds of pedestrians but stay with it, as long as you're hotel-bound it's o.k. After check-in, however, you will need to find parking during your stay (forget the car except for excursions to the countryside). Some hotels provide permits for street parking but a public garage is the more likely solution. Most hotels have discount arrangements with these garages and you will pay approximately 120 AS ($10) per day. Hotels out of the center usually offer free parking.
Salzburg Card
For admission to virtually all Salzburg attractions and unlimited public transportation, the Salzburg Card is a worthwhile investment. A 24-hour card is 21 euros the 48-hour version is 28 euros, and the 72-hour card costs 34 euros. With it comes the Salzburg Guide containing a city map and useful information.
A Von Trapp Gets Scammed
While The Sound of Music has been a financial boon to Salzburg and Hollywood, Maria von Trapp, the Julie Andrews character, didn't make out so well.
In 1956, according to Julie Hirsch's book, The Sound of Music-The Making of America's Favorite Movie, Maria was approached by a German film producer who offered $10,000 for the rights to her story. Upon advice from a lawyer, Maria also asked for royalties and a share of the profits. The producer lied and told her German film companies were forbidden by law from paying royalties to foreigners - she was by then an American citizen. A gullible Maria agreed and unknowingly signed away all the film rights to her story.
There was a German film version but it was 20th Century Fox that created the blockbuster that might have made her a very wealthy woman.
After spending 30 years as a missionary in New Guinea, Maria von Trapp died in 1987 at the age of 82 and is buried next to her husband on their property in Vermont.
- Edelweiss is not an Austrian folk song. It was created by Richard Rogers and Oscar Hammerstein and it was the last they wrote together, as Hammerstein died in August 1960, nine months after the musical opened and five years before the movie.
- The entire interior of the von Trapp villa, including the ornate ballroom, was built and shot at a studio in Hollywood. The set was eventually donated to the Hollywood Museum. The abbey courtyard/cloister scenes, and the graveyard scenes where the von Trapps hid from the Nazis, were also filmed in Hollywood.
- Magicians though they are, the filmmakers couldn't quite reproduce those Alpine meadows and mountains. For that they had to go to Austria for the real thing.
