In the end, though, Salzburg always comes down to music. Of the city’s many and famed festivals, the best-known are the 6-week Salzburger Festspiele which runs from late July to early September, and the Mozart Week sponsored each January by the International Mozarteum Foundation, a Salzburg organization which also puts on many individual concerts and smaller festivals throughout the year. The popular Festspiele in particular has become a tough ticket, routinely selling out many months before the summer dates; if you don’t want to pay upwards of $85 for a top-priced seat, get your requests in around the first of the year. The Mozart Week, featuring a series of concerts held in and around the composer’s birthplace, draws some of the world’s top names in conductors and musicians and should also be reserved well ahead. (Contact information for both events is given below.)
If you incline towards the sound of (somewhat) more recent music, la Julie Andrews, you will of course know that the Trapp Family is also counted among Salzburg’s stories, and you won’t step far from your hotel without being reminded of that fact. Indeed, you can be picked at the very doors of your hotel if you choose, and taken on a coach tour which will visit nearly all of the places in the city and countryside where The Sound of Music was filmed, including the famous gazebo and the lovely gardens of the Mirabell. Since these tours encompass a number of the most important sights in Salzburg, you need not be a fan of Miss Andrews to enjoy one; but it helps. Some years ago a companion and I took the tour with an operator whose policy was to play a tape of the film’s soundtrack continuously on the coach’s sound system, for the entire length of the 3-hour adventure. When after 40 minutes or so the driver allowed that "sometimes, at the passengers’ request" he could be agreeable to turning the tape off a bit early, applause in the bus was thunderous and soon followed by blessed silence. One finds that a few renditions of "Favorite Things" can go rather a long way.
Yet the title of the song is wonderfully apt. Salzburg is the sort of town that invites the anointing of favorite things: a place filled with charm, surprise, and memorable delights both large and small — from the fantastic horse sculptures in the grandiose fountain of the Residenz, to the sublimely sinful pastries of the endless Konditoreien (bakery shops) that seemingly appear on every streetcorner. When you visit, you are sure to come away with favorites of your own; at the top of the list will be Salzburg itself.
