Despite criticism, Frankenmuth says they are keeping 55-foot cross (in a public park)

[Lydia Leftcoast]

23. I fully agree--my mother's highest form of praise was to call something "cute,"

and Frankenmuth is fake Bavarian cuteness run amok. So when my parents helped me move out East to school and back, we had to stop there.

My father, a Lutheran pastor, was as into old churches as much as my mother was into "cute," so on one pass through we stopped at a 19th century Missouri Synod church (there's your clue right there). The pastor happened to be on the premises when we visited, and when my parents mentioned that they were helping me move East to attend graduate school, he said, "Why are you doing that? She should get married instead."

Another reason not to like that place, although in fairness, it was established by actual German immigrants, unlike Leavenworth, Washington, which just decided to transform itself into an Alpine village, despite having no historical connection to that region.