Inside the German Town Where They Pretend It’s the Wild West

Germany has a bizarre obsession. No, it’s not skull shapes and racial history — it’s the Wild West.

Since the 1800s, Germans have been reading stories about the American frontier. In fact, one of Hitler’s favorite authors was a guy named Karl May, a man who told stories about the American West despite not ever seeing it (the furthest West he got in the U.S. was Buffalo, New York).

This love of the West continues today, so much so that Germans have their own Westerns and, for some reason, parks where they pretend it’s the Wild West. Here’s one of the most substantial ones: El Dorado in the town of Templin.