I'm Liesl. I'm sixteen years old and I don't need a governess.

I've been in a very Von Trapp mood of late.

What’s a Von Trapp mood I hear you ask?

It’s where you find yourself thinking about The Sound of Music a lot.

There is a reason for this, I assure you I haven’t gone completely off the deep end (well ... no more so than usual!) I’ve put my Travel Agent hat back on and have been busy planning and booking accommodation and flights for our little vacation when Jaime is here with us at the start of August.

Our current plan is:
A weekend in Paris – always good fun
A few days on the Cote D’Azur – showing Jaime around Cannes and trying not to descend into homicidal rage over all the tourists everywhere
Drive up to Lake Como and stay in Bellagio. Hope that George Clooney is free for a drink.
Drive through to Salzburg – see some lakes and churches and castles and drink some beer, eat some schnitzel.
Continue on to Munich – see some churches and castles and museums and drink some beer, eat some wurst. Rinse, lather, repeat.

Should be awesome fun. Very much looking forward to it – especially seeing as I’ve only ever been to Austria and Germany during winter and I’m looking forward to doing some exploring and sight-seeing when it’s not – 14 degrees.

So I’ve been booking accommodation.

Did you know that in Salzburg, you can stay in a place called Villa Trapp?!?!?

Which is – if you couldn’t guess, the actual house the Von Trapp family lived in before they fled Austria (not by climbing through the Alps, however romantic that may seem, they actually took a train to Italy) before they emigrated to America!! But it’s their actual house and it has been completely renovated to its original state and is now a guest house. In less nice news, Heinrich Himmler, Head of the SS and all round evil bastard used it as his summer house but even still – a place that is full of history.

I mentioned this awesome piece of history to M.

To say he was unimpressed would be an understatement and he quickly put the kybosh on any ideas I might have been percolating about staying there.

His final ruling: “I won’t be staying in any Von Trapp house, there will be no Sound of Music tours, no Sound of Music sing-a-longs, no Sound of Music memorabilia. None.”


Party-pooper.

So I’ve found us a great little apartment to stay in instead.

But, because I am nothing if not a contrary, vindictive smart-arse, I had the DVD of The Sound of Music all queued up and ready to play the minute M walked in the door Friday night. And I sang along with every song. Loudly. Especially the yodelling bits.

He didn’t love it.

Want to know what else I realised? Let me pre-face this by saying that The Sound of Music is probably my favourite film, it’s one I’m always happy to watch and I would have seen it well over 100 times. When I was younger I used to fast-forward through the “boring bits” – when Reverend Mother sings “Climb every Mountain”, when Maria and Georg are confessing their love and sing “Something Good” – whereas these are now my favourite parts.

What I noticed on Friday night is that Captain Von Trapp is HOT!
Clearly I’ve gotten old enough to think young Rolfe and his stupid condescending attitude and lame telegrams is a putz.

Georg’s simmering sexuality and stern looks is Where. It’s. At.
Christopher Plummer had it going on back in the day, non?

And when he sings "Eidelweiss" ...... mmmmmm. I go all gooey.

So that’s that. I’m in a Von Trapp mood.

I’m off to contemplate making play clothes out of old drapes.
(That’s a blatant lie. I don’t have any drapes.)


Auf Wiedersehen, darlings

B
xxx