The Hills are alive in Salzburg

MANILA, Philippines - In the Palace of Mirabell, outside the Inner Old Town of Salzburg, tourists like to pose around the horse fountain, set within the spacious, well-trimmed garden.

The fountain was the setting for Julie Andrews as she sang “do-re-mi” to her wards, the Von Trapp children, in the ‘60s smash movie musical “The Sound of Music.”

Outside the palace, a billboard announces a stage rendition of the movie, set in the Austrian Alps, and based (not entirely accurately) on the true story of Salzburg resident Maria Von Trapp.

I was told that residents of the city - numbering 148,078 as of the start of 2011 - and most Austrians for that matter are not big fans of the movie.

In Salzburg, Austria’s fourth largest city, the Alpine hills can look truly alive with the sound of music. But the sound in the Hollywood movie is unmistakably American pop music and not Austrian, although I was welcomed upon my arrival in Vienna by American pop singer Bruno Mars crooning “Grenade” in the taxi.

Another thing that probably does not endear the movie to the average Austrian is that it’s a reminder of a dark period in the country’s history, when Jews were forced to flee to countries such as the United States to escape the Nazis during World War II.

The Silent Night Holy Night Chapel in Oberndorf stands on the site of the fire-razed church where ‘Stille Nacht’ was heard for the first time.

During the war, Salzburg was annexed by the German Third Reich and became the site of the KZ Salzburg-Maxglan concentration camp for Roma detainees, who were forced into slave labor in local enterprises. Austria, which gave Hollywood Arnold Schwarzenegger, also gave the world Adolf Hitler.

Salzburg residents would rather talk about their famous sons, one of whom created sublime Austrian music: Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart.

The 18th century composer’s home, painted yellow, faces a square in the Inner Old Town, along the narrow shopping street, Getreidegasse. The street is lined with little shops selling luxury goods and artisanal Austrian products. Salzburg’s Old Town was listed as a UNESCO World Heritage Site in 1997.

Mozart’s home at 9 Getreidegasse has been turned into a museum. Outside, a hawker roasted chestnuts, which sold briskly. At the opposite end of the cobbled square a coffee shop that looked like an Alpine inn enticed tourists.

Austria is renowned for its coffee culture, and Salzburg boasts of one with a special history. The Café Tomaselli, now in Alter Markt Square, started in another site in 1703, which could make it the oldest café in the world. A guide said the café, just a stone’s throw from Mozart’s home, was likely where the young prodigy heard his first opera. The music is believed to have provided the inspiration for his life’s calling; at the tender age of five, Mozart was already composing little pieces of music.

Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart is everywhere in Salzburg, where he was born on the third floor of 9 Getreidegasse. The house, painted yellow, is now a museum.

His principal patron was Salzburg’s ruler, the Holy Roman Empire’s Prince-Archbishop Hieronymus Colloredo, who could sweep his gaze across the entire city of baroque structures from a fortress built in 1077 on a hilltop, the Festung Hohensalzburg.

These days the imposing castle can be reached either by cable car or by foot on steep, winding walkways. A puppet museum has been set up in one of the rooms. Cannons still stand guard around the fortress, which offers panoramic views of the nearby Alpine peaks and the plain through which the Salzach River runs.

In ancient times the river was used to transport salt from the mines, several kilometers away from what is now the Old Town. Celts were believed to have been the first settlers in the area, with evidence of their communities being traced back to the 5th century B.C.

Salzburg, literally meaning “salt castle,” was built on fortunes made from the salt mines. In the 8th century when the salt barges had to pay a toll, Saint Rupert named the city Salzburg.

Probably because of the abundance of salt, foreign tourists could find Salzburg cuisine too salty. My Asian companions found the Austro-Hungarian goulash (beef stew) too salty, as well as the crusty bread, even if I pointed out that there must be a reason it was called salt bread. They joked that even the pastries and confectionery in Salzburg, for which Austria is famous, could be salty.

They were not. A local mousse-based chocolate cake that I sampled was to die for, more than making up for my disappointment with Austria’s famous food export, the Sacher Torte. The chocolate cake, with its thin filling of apricot jam, originated in Hotel Sacher in Vienna, where Mozart settled in his adult life and completed most of his masterpieces. Vienna has just been picked as the city with the world’s best quality of life, and transcendent Austrian music, if not its world-renowned chocolate cake, surely has something to do with it.

I stayed away from Sacher Torte in Salzburg, where the original from the hotel is also sold, but everything I ate during my visit to the city 300 kilometers west of Vienna, including the roasted chestnuts, was enjoyable.

There was no time to climb up to the hilltop home, across the river from the Inner Old Town, of the priest Joseph Mohr, another source of Salzburg pride. In 1816, Mohr, who worked in Oberndorf, wrote the lyrics to “Stille Nacht.” Researchers believe that two years later, Mohr asked Austrian headmaster Franz Xaver Gruber to set the lyrics to music. Thus was born one of the world’s most famous Christmas carols, “Silent Night.”

Translated into at least 44 languages, Silent Night has been recorded by over 300 artists worldwide, with notable versions by Enya (performed in Irish) and Andrea Bocelli (in Italian).

Austria has a strong Christmas tradition. As early as November, parks and stores are decked with holiday décor and sell Christmas ornaments.

From the picturesque hills of Salzburg, you can understand why someone would be inspired to write about silent, holy nights.