Salzburg

A trip to Salzburg was inevitable, I guess, given Michael's obsession with The Sound of the Music. Two years ago, everytime we saw a nun in Italy he wondered if Maria was closeby. Lookout this Halloween for two lederhosen-clad Chinese boys.
As a parent, I've been impressed at the power of fantasy and this one has considerable hold worldwide; although the German film story about the Von Trapps does not mention the war, apparently. After being in Europe last, seemed clear that ol' Walt D was trying to recreate the fantasy of Western Europe in Anaheim:
Flowers everywhere, castles, pristine walks -the whole package. For Europeans and Americans, the medieval becomes a powerful storage house for the modern imagination (Japan has its corollary, as well). This had a great run in the '60s (Tolkien), superimposed in science fiction via Star Wars, and this is making a serious theological return, say, in Doug Wilson's book
but particularly in the liturgical aesthetic expressed in the emerging church movement. Europeans tend to fantasize about their past, but also the American wild west. The social fantasy of Europe - the social welfare state - is unraveling now, given the debt crisis and their demographic decline; fascism of the 1930s was the last time these pressures - and the modern nostalgia for the past - surfaced, albeit, violently.

Maybe The Sound of Music (the REAL von Trapps escaped the Nazis for Italy) is more timely than I gave credit for. And Hitler's "project" was heavily invested in creating a cinematic fantasy of the German people, so there's a lot of overlap here.

But back to the four of us

on the Sound of Music tour

with Christine,an American PhD who leads English-speaking tours of this fabled land:

We learned a lot about the making of the film, ranging from bursting of the bubble information - eg the church where the original Capt and Maria REALLY got married -

which seemed only to intensify the experience, even for me (above: where Andrews and Plummer got married).
The side chapels were beautiful illustrations of Biblical narratives

which informed the imaginations of illiterate believers of the past - superior, I think, over our own media-saturated, PowerPoint condition which, almost universally, tends to freeze, not provoke, the imagination. As one writer put it, "Images are the new opiate of the people." Check out the actual skeleton in the front altar piece which the Capt and Maria faced.

Carolyn found her beloved lamb and geometric designwork

The market where Greta Von Trapp dropped a tomato.

The medieval section, where our 15th century hotel (Goldener Hirsch) was located, was vibrant with tourists, yet not bad at all - at least the hotel served as an inn then and now.

Scenes of Salzburg:

Michael was thrilled at every point, reliving each scene. We then traveled to Zurich on Air Berlin - a better discount carrier - where I got prepaid SIM cards to work the phones from 2 years past; they worked! More on telephones in a later entry. We have been visiting friends and enjoying some fantastic weather.