Stories and Adventures...: Nonnberg Abbey, where we attempted to break into movie sets

We experienced an evil bus driver. The bus we needed to take was still AT THE BUS STOP, but the driver refused to open and we had to wait about 20 minutes for the next bus. It was extremely hot and the bus stop was a greenhouse no matter where you stood, which was annoying. We survived though and headed back into town to look around Nonnberg Abbey, the supposed location of the abbey scenes in the Sound of Music. I say supposed because I just learned that there were no scenes filmed at the abbey and they recreated the gates and other parts of the abbey in a studio. How dare they do that!

Apparently the real Maria von Trapp was a nun in training (postulant) in the abbey after WWI and it was then used to film parts of the film. My spell check keeps saying this isn't a word, but postulate as it's trying to force me to write is not the right word either.

Nonnberg Abbey was founded in 714 and is one of the oldest continually functioning nunneries in the world.

It is just below the castle in Salzburg. I didn't walk to it my first trip, but since knew the Sound of Music tour did not include a walk up to the abbey because it is disruptive to the nuns, Adrienne and I headed over to the nunnery to disrupt the nuns ourselves.

The walk over has a lovely view of Salzburg, though Adrienne was glad the hike didn't go all the way to the top of the mountain.

This is the car entrance to the abbey.

And here is the abbey! It was rebuilt after a fire in the 1400s, but some parts of the original can still be seen.

Adrienne looking at the door longingly.

The flowers along the wall.

A graveyard.

Adrienne and I did not know at the time, due to some misleading information, that they did not film the abbey scenes at the actual abbey. I believed at the time that the scenes where the von Trapps hide in the graveyard, the nuns stealing car parts and cars driving through the gate were filmed here. Apparently not.

Due to this misinformation, we spent much of our time trying to burst through doors to get to the various locations in the film. It was very similar to the time I was in the Opera House in Paris and my friend Julie and I spent much of our time attempting to burst through doors in the basement so we could see the lake that is actually under the opera house.

Unfortunately, our attempts to break into the courtyard were thwarted by an old man making shoes and a locked door. We chose not to walk through his kitchen to explore further.

We then saw a nun walking by and attempted to follow her to see where she was walking, but she disappeared.

I mean, she actually disappeared. She was ten feet in front of us and then suddenly she was nowhere to be seen. She probably knew we were attempting to look for abbey locations.

I would like to use this moment to interject that we were very quiet in our attempts to reach the courtyard and attempted to not be obvious. We were also the only people there.

Despite our failed attempts to break in, the abbey was quite beautiful.

These are the gates where the car was supposedly driven through, but I guess that was really in California. Sigh.

Here we are posing in front of the gate that betrayed us.

Adrienne attempting to break in.

Adrienne after she realized the gate was already unlocked.

Near the entrance into the main sanctuary.

The main chapel.

Adrienne being mildly offensive.

The organ.

This was really interesting. You had to pay approximately 50 cents for the light to turn on and you can see the very old frescoes. They are in the Byzantine style from the 10th century. They are some of the oldest frescoes in Austria.

The view.

You can see one of the corners of the castle from the back entrance to the abbey.

Adrienne in a courtyard, which unfortunately was not THE courtyard.

One of the locations of our attempted but thwarted break in.

We proceeded to head back in to town for dinner, a bit more wandering and then a fairly early night (for us) because we were getting up early for the Sound of Music tour the next morning!