'Sound of Music' plan protested

VIENNA, Austria (AP) — The hills are alive ... with the sound of protest.

Plans to run a hotel out of a former home of the von Trapp family immortalized in the blockbuster hit movie "The Sound of Music" have triggered fierce resistance from neighbors who fear tourists will tie up traffic and make a nuisance of themselves.

"We will fight this with all means at our disposal," said Andreas Braunbruck, who lives near the Villa Trapp in a neighborhood of Salzburg already teeming with "Sound of Music" tourists seeking a glimpse of the house.

"Buses and cars are constantly in the street in front of our homes as it is," he told Austrian television on Sunday.

The 125-year-old, pale yellow villa trimmed in white and black is perched on the outskirts of Salzburg, where the 1965 film starring Julie Andrews and Christopher Plummer was made.

The movie, which altered some details of the family's history, tells the story of a World War II-era Austrian nun-turned-nanny who cared for a widower's seven children, taught them how to sing and eventually fell in love with him.

Baron Georg Ludwig von Trapp, the real-life widower, lived in the villa with his family from 1923 to 1938. After the Nazis confiscated the property in 1939, SS chief Heinrich Himmler moved in and stayed until 1945.

The von Trapps emigrated to the U.S. and settled in Vermont, where their family lodge in Stowe remains a popular tourist attraction.