Roadside shrines became more plentiful as we drove deeper into Bavaria, and we started seeing very tall poles decorated with diagonal blue and white stripes that rose from the town squares. The maypoles were remnants of the recent May Day celebration. In several country towns we spotted bulky cigarette machines attached to walls, occasionally cheek by jowl with penny-candy dispensers.

Along the roadside, hand-lettered signs read "spargel," and a waitress, who couldn't remember the English word, described it as a vegetable that was long and green or sometimes white. Beans, we guessed, but soon learned it was the German-favorite asparagus, and its arrival in May is greeted like we Utahns welcome summer corn, including roadside stands selling white, spring-fresh asparagus, and restaurants featuring soups, salads and entrees.

In Garmisch, deep in Bavaria in southeast Germany and near the site of the 1936 Winter Olympics, we were fortunate to find a zimmer frei with stunning views of the Alps. Here, among three generations of a family, the teenagers spoke English as did their grandmother, Doris, who had hosted Canadian, American and British guests for decades. She showed us around the garden, volunteering that locals would not mow their yards yet, as the tiny white and soft blue flowers — and dandelions — in the lawns had dropped their seeds, so the grass would be filled with blossoms again next spring. Doris was drying dandelion heads on a screen to make tea, collecting dandelion leaves for salad and harvesting roots to cure diarrhea.

We watched her teenage grandsons and their father splitting logs they had already cut to the exact 30-inch length we had previously seen throughout the mountain towns, neatly stacking logs to a height of six feet, and stabilizing the wood pile by stacking logs in alternating directions on each end.

In the morning, Doris told us the cows would soon be herded to the high meadows, and as if on cue we heard the hollow knocking of cowbells. From the back yard, we watched cows, mooing deeply, wending their way through the grassy stretches between yards fenced by crisscrossed poles and the forest, the quintessential alpine scene.

A further picturesque sight in Bavaria is lush meadows on rolling hills dotted with simple wooden huts. Their naturalness and simplicity contradicted the whimsy of our next major site — Schloss (or castle) Neuschwanstein, the extravagant, fanciful mountain castle of eccentric King Ludwig II, who lived from 1845-86.