And yet more Bavarians. Mittenwald really is a slice of pure, uncut Bavaria, positively overflowing with lederhosen and buildings that look like cuckoo clocks. Although it is a fairly popular tourist destination for Bavarians and other Germans, it's pretty well off the beaten path of American tourism -- nobody spoke English and we hardly saw any fellow Americans. (I shouldn't even be talking about it, but this is show and tell.) The only reason Mike and I even knew about Mittenwald is pure happenstance. Long ago in 1987, when my family lived for 6 months in London, we toured the continent for 3 weeks on Eurail. The train that took us from Vienna to Munich happened to be pulled along by a highly unusual engine. My Dad describes it well: Hitler's fantastic mother of all steam engines, built in 1936 and dragged out of mothballs in the Munich science and industry museum to pull our train in celebration of Mittenwald's 500th anniversary . . . People lined up at every village along the way to see that engine, like we were a parade. So, yeah, we remembered Mittenwald. And, as I was saying, it's a great off-the-beaten-path kind of place. Totally unspoiled.

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