Lilly Teacher Creativity Fellowship Journal: Day 11-St. Gilgen Mozart and Instrument museums

We had a very enjoyable day today cycling to St. Gilgen and back to visit the Mozart Museum and the Instrument Museum. We somehow managed to again avoid any rain! Only one more cycling day to go and we haven’t been rained on yet...even if it rains tomorrow I still think that we have been very lucky to go this long without having to ride in any rain (especially since it rained for 10 days straight before we got here!)

St. Gilgen is much more “touristy” than the other towns we have visited. I think that the town has definitely tried to play on the fact that St. Gilgen is on the lake and near Salzburg and attempting to draw tourists. The fact that they have deemed the town “Mozart Village” proves my theory, since Mozart never actually went to St. Gilgen! However, it was still quite interesting to go through the Mozart museum dedicated to Mozart’s sister, Nannerl, and his mother, both of whom lived in the home at different points. Mozart’s mother was born at the home and lived there until she was 4, and Nannerl moved to the home when she married.

The most interesting stop today was the instrument museum. It is a museum maintained by a private owner and it houses 4,200 instruments! The son of the owner was the guide. He started by letting us in and telling us that we didn’t need to pay until after we finished...what museum have you ever visited where they didn’t want your money first? Anyway, we browsed the collection and then were invited to have a seat and he demonstrated a number of instruments from the collection. Most of the instruments are world instruments from a wide array of cultures. In fact, one of the instruments that he demonstrated was a Native American instrument from the Dakota tribe. He also told us about his parents, who are both musicians, and how they started collecting. They were both trained at the Mozarteum in Salzburg, his father was an opera singer and his mother plays piano and organ. I highly recommend a stop at this museum if you are ever in the area!

Tomorrow is our last cycling day with a 30k ride back to Mondsee. It has been a remarkable experience and we look forward to one more day on the road before we head to Budapest. We enjoy your comments! Thanks for following our journey.

Photos from today:

You can't truly appreciate how maddening this wall was until you see the video of all of these cuckoo clocks going at one time with a German polka playing in the background! I promise, I'll let you know when we get the videos posted!