LYCOS RETRIEVER 
Bavaria
built 202 days ago
A permanent item in the program of Bavaria City Racing is the Schoolmaster Drive for Kids. This year, Möller Autoschade will once again facilitate the successful charity program, in which extra seats are placed in the race cars. These seats can be bought by sponsors and visitors for a ride on the track as a passenger. In association with drivers of the highest racing leagues this initiative will be organized for the third time. All proceeds go to the KidsRights Foundation - an organisation that looks out for the most vulnerable children in the world.
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In the 1790s Bavaria was a member of the first and second anti-French coalitions, and for its pains it was successively occupied by Revolutionary France (1796), by Austria (1799), and then again by France (1800). In the following year Bavaria became an ally of France and was ... able to expand its territories at the expense of Austria, acquiring by the Treaty of Pressburg in 1805 approximately the boundaries it now has. The treaty also elevated the Bavarian duchy to the status of a kingdom, and its ruler, the elector Maximilian IV Joseph, became King Maximilian I. Externally the freedom of Bavaria continued to be restricted by the power of Napoleon—from July 1806 onward technically in his capacity as protector of the Confederation of the Rhine, which the new kingdom joined. Internally, however, full sovereignty provided the basis for the creation of a modern state. Traditional privileges were swept away, often ruthlessly, by the central bureaucracy. The reforms were anticlerical in spirit, and many monasteries were secularized.
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Bavaria has 12 million inhabitants of which a majority are Catholic Christians. Two major rivers flow through the state, the Danube and the Main. The major cities in Bavaria are Munich, Nuremberg, Augsburg, Wuerzburg, Ingolstadt, Regensburg, Fuerth and Erlangen. Bavaria shares international borders with Austria and the Czech Republic. Neigbouring states within Germany are Baden-Württemberg, Hessen, Thüringen and Sachsen.
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Bavaria has a rich culture, in part because of its long period of independence. Many of its traditions date from the Middle Ages, when the area was a duchy. Bavarians take great pride in their cultural history, and medieval songs and poems in Bavarian dialect are taught to children in Bavarian schools. Outside of Germany, Bavarian culture is often more visible than other German cultural traditions, and all things Bavarian are often mistakenly considered representative of the country as a whole. For example, Oktoberfest, beer gardens, and traditional Bavarian costumes are typically presented as "German" in many contexts.
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The first of several divisions of the duchy of Bavaria occurred in 1255. With the extinction of the Hohenstaufen in 1268 ... Swabian territories were acquired by the Wittelsbach dukes. Emperor Louis the Bavarian acquired Brandenburg, Tyrol, Holland and Hainaut for his House but released the Upper Palatinate for the Palatinate branch of the Wittelsbach in 1329. In 1506 with the Landshut War of Succession the other parts of Bavaria were reunited and Munich became the sole capital.
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Beyond Munich, capital of Bavaria counting 1.3 mio souls though often called a "big village", and its sprawling suburbs: the Alps - home of many famous mountain resorts. Landscapes as in Visconti's movie about the life of König Ludwig II, villages and towns that seem unchanged for the last 100 years except maybe for a few additional banks, gas stations and souvenir shops along the main town roads. Otherwise, the "homo bavaricus" has stayed pretty much the same: country shirt and richly decorated traditional jacket, leather pants with flowery suspenders (Lederhosen), felt hat garnished with feathers, "goatee beards" and many pins full of ornaments, little bells and trinkets. The "costumes" are worn on Sundays and even in Munich during the Oktoberfest season. Some take a raft, beer and music ride down Munich's home river the Isar. On the other hand the sacred King of all Bavarians, Ludwig II, architect of almost all castles in the south of Munich of which Neuschwanstein (new-swan-rock) is best known for its role model for Walt Disney's sleeping beauty castle.
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