Give your Teddy Bear a Trip to Germany!
This has got to be the weirdest travel story I've heard in a long time. It is a lethal combination of "cute" and "crazy." And, why, yes, it involves Japan! How did you guess?
Here is the story:
Japan's team for the World Cup and its legions of supporters aren't the only ones heading off to Germany this summer. Thanks to a "crazy" tourist service, a VIP tour of Munich awaits another group of Japanese -- teddy bears. Teddy in Munich, the service its founder Christopher Bohm describes as "crazy," accepts teddy bear travelers from across the globe, gives them sightseeing trips centering on the Bavarian city famous for its beer-and-sausage filled Oktoberfest and even provides German lessons where the stuffed toys are taught the meaning of words like sauerkraut and lederhosen. Teddy travelers are given a handcrafted photo album detailing their trip and then returned to their owners following a seven-day holiday. |
Please go read the story , if only to see the crazy photos of these traveling toys and their human tour guides. By the way, it's great that Japanese teddy bears can now take holidays abroad like Japanese people. Ah, but can the bears also carry piles of cutting-edge digital video equipment and take photos?
And here is the website if you too would like to send your teddy bear on a holiday in Germany:
http://www.teddy-in-munich.com/index.html
Listen, I would like to go to Germany myself someday. I am darn sure not going to spend money to let my teddy bear go there before I do!
By the way, the German word for "teddy bears" (I think) is "Teddybären."