> real pretzels. I live in Germany (currently Mecklenburg-Vorpommern, but Bavaria before that) and should therefore, perhaps, be regarded as the authority on the subject. (hooray! [...]
> Sadly they don't sell good pretzels around here, so I'm looking forward to getting to eat some on my upcoming holiday in Bavaria. You couldn't BELIEVE the things they're sometimes trying to sell as pretzels here. Yuck. Last summer (I think it was) the local shopping centre had what they called "Bavarian Weeks" or something in that direction. So they decorated everything in blue and white, played horrible mock Bavarian folk music, and the bakeries sold the WORST PRETZELS EVER. I think I could almost do better. They were yellow and soft and COVERED in salt. I'm not exaggerating. They had a CRUST of salt, about two millimetres thick. I like salty things personally, but this was ridiculous.
>

LOL. You know what Bavaria is like, because you've lived there. Yet you're saying that Germans in Germany -- living within 400 km of Deutschland's largest and famed southernmost state, and twelve years after the Wall came down -- they still haven't had opportunity to 'get' the concept of "Bayerische Kultur" and accurately represent it in appropriate fashion. So now you're forced to endure blue and white decorations with 'horrible' mock Bavarian music. Including horrible mock Bavarian pretzels? :-)

And I thought those restaurants trying to push unnatural *nitrate-pickled* sauerkraut (straight out of the vinegar barrel -- ick) were the ones trying to murder me using horrible, horrible mock German cabbage.