Jennieworld Today

With Easter falling so early in the calendar this year, that can only mean that Lent is also starting very early. Now, in previous years I have been known to give up certain edible luxuries for the forty days, and so I’m considering whether I should abstain from anything this year. While I was pregnant I decided that I was suffering enough and so gave nothing up, while persuading my husband to give up alcohol so that at least one of us would be making an effort. Last year, a friend of mine for whom giving up sweets and chocolates would not be a sacrifice, decided to give up downloading music from the internet for Lent, as that was the thing which would test her resolve and self control the most! She succeeded, by all accounts, although I seem to remember hearing that she was making lists in the run up to Easter Day of what she would be downloading first!

Anyway, I generally give up sweets, chocolates, crisps etc, but I’m wondering about trying something new this year. As well as these luxuries being lost to me for six weeks, I was wondering about making a proactive resolution for Lent, like exercising at least once every day. I find formal exercise extremely boring, and as such do quite a lot to avoid it. When I do take part in exercise it is quite an event, which is why you may have read about previous exercise phases on this blog in the past. However, perhaps ‘giving up laziness’ would be the way forward for Lent 2008.

Or, I could look on the giving up of my sweeties as my small amount of fasting (I’m not sure I’d ever be strong enough for actual fasting on religious grounds, and I have a lot of respect for those who do, such as the Muslims during Ramadan) and the daily exercise as my (very weak) penance. Then, I plan to try to calculate the amount that I would usually spend on these luxuries, and donate the amount to charity. I’m not sure what sort of sum of money this could be, but I’m sure that at the end of Lent I’ll feel far happier having given it to a worthy cause, rather than having spent it on calories and saturated fat that I could really live without!

I haven’t written anything since I went to Salzburg with my friend Maria. It was beautiful. We looked at the brochures before going, but never imagined that it would be anywhere near as good, but it managed. It was very compact, managing to fit all of the sights into an area around which you could easily walk. And there were plenty of teashops for us to take a break from pounding the streets and defrost a little! It was extremely cold, but then we expected that, visiting Austria in December you hardly expect sunbathing weather!

We had five days in Salzburg, and managed to fit in quite a lot, without exhausting ourselves to the point that we would have needed a holiday to recover from this one! We walked around the city finding all the spots where the Sound of Music was filmed (including the steps, above, in the Mirabell Gardens where the conclusion to the song ‘Do Re Mi’ was filmed) and we also took a tour of the locations used in the film outside the city.  

The above photo is of the Leopoldskron Palace, just outside Salzburg, and the lake which ‘Maria’ and the children fell into from their boat when the Baroness came to visit the Von Trapps. Unfortunately it was a rainy day when we took the tour, but it was still wonderful to see all these places that we had seen so many times on film. And also, by all accounts we were lucky to have so much fine weather as we did, as Salzburg is notorious for the amount of rainfall. The cast and crew of Sound of Music, by all accounts, had real trouble finding enough fine weather to film all the outdoors scenes.

This photo shows the Untersberg mountain looking a bit like a painted backdrop behind the Leopoldskron palace and lake (centre right-ish). This is the mountain from which Maria was reputed to listen as a child to the nuns singing in the Nonnberg Abbey, and from where she runs to the Abbey at the start of the film on hearing the bells sounding for the service. No wonder she was hot and bothered on arriving, given that the Untersberg is ten kilometres from Salzburg! Anyway, it makes a pretty picture, so I’ll make my peace with that!

Finally, this is a view over the city and the river from the Hohensalzburg fortress. The fortress dominates the city and can be viewed from most vantage points. We managed to go up the funicular to the fortress twice, and loved the views both times. The previous photo of the Untersberg was taken from the fortress as well, although that was obviously the other side. This was taken by means of my leaning out through a cannon-hole (what are they called - gun-emplacements or something?). I couldn’t resist the photo opportunity once I saw this view, even though I must have looked like a bit of a prat!

Anyway, this is enough of my holiday diary for one day I think. I’d definitely go back, and hope to go in the not too distant future for a winter holiday with my family. We would stay a little way outside Salzburg and then travel in for a couple of day trips. I’d thoroughly recommend it, especially for anyone who enjoys good cake!