Sound of Music

After returning from Austria in June, we watched The Sound of Music again. (The three-year-old really likes it, so we've actually watched it again and again and again.) Anyway, I noticed something this time. At the end of the movie when they leave Salzburg by hiking over to the mountains to get to Switzerland so that Captain von Trapp (a good Austrian) will not be drafted by the bad German Navy, I realized exactly where they are hiking. Mind you, the fact that Salzburg is more than 100 miles from Switzerland doesn't bother me. Chalk it up to artistic license and all (just like Maria running down from the Untersberg to the convent for vespers, doing in a matter of minutes what it would take an Olympic athlete at least two hours to accomplish). Here's the Hoher Göll (2523 meters) where the movie ends. They are hiking along the edge of the mountain at the right side (see the picture below).



You may be able to just see a small structure on the ridge at the right. That's called the Kehlsteinhaus, a.k.a. the Eagle's Nest. It just strikes me as an odd choice for the movie to end having the von Trapp family hiking up to the Alpine hideout of Adolf Hitler even if very few people would have known that.

By the way, here's a picture of the Untersberg where Maria sings "The hills are alive with the sound of music..." (taken from the Eagle's Nest).