Two young women enjoy the sunshine on the Fellhorn mountain near Oberstorf, southern Germany on January 28, 2011. Sun and fresh snow in the Alps offer best conditions for skiers at the moment. (AFP PHOTO/KARL-JOSEF HILDENBRAND)

As 2010 Vancouver Winter Olympics fade into a pleasant yet distant memory, it's heartening for Canada's lovers of the Olympic movement to see the entire process and enthusiasm ignite again -- this time for the 2018 Olympic Winter Games.

While the 2014 Games are already set for Sochi, Russia, the IOC Evaluation Committee has spent much of winter 2011 on the road touring three short-listed 2018 sites: Annecy, France; Pyeongchang, South Korea; and, most recently, the German state of Bavaria, which is anchored by Munich. While there's no doubt France and South Korea have mounted formidable bids, it's hard not to hope the Games could return to Bavaria to showcase its alpine traditions, alpine beauty, and infectious enthusiasm for winter sport.

Bavaria is the quaint, farm-filled, mountainous region of Southern Germany bordering on Austria. Think: Julie Andrews singing the Sound of Music on an Austrian hillside with snow-capped Bavarian Alps in the background, and you've got a pretty good idea of the "look" of the region. It's true, Bavaria is the land of lederhosen, Oktoberfest, oompah-pah bands, BMWs and bratwurst, as well as cowbells, chocolate-coloured farmhouses, and umpteen whimsical Bavarian castles built by the eccentric King Ludwig II. Those castle-filled Chitty-Chitty-Bang-Bang scenes alone will guarantee television eye-candy if the Games go to Germany. But it's the region's enthusiasm for sport that could also be riveting.

This season alone, Bavaria staged three World Championships and 12 World Cups in sports that typically dominate a Winter Olympic roster, including alpine skiing, biathlon, bobsleigh and speed skating. You would be hard-pressed to find another region of the world so fired up about these sports. Sleepy Hansel & Gretel mountain villages with cobbled streets and steepled churches have swollen to 130,000-plus when a bobsleigh World Cup or an Alpine World Championship has come to town this season. In Germany, fans flock to speed skating and nordic skiing's biathlon stands the way Canadians jam into hockey arenas -- much of which was witnessed by the IOC during its February evaluation.

German skating Olympian and Munich 2018 Chair Katarina Witt says: "The Evaluation Commission has seen how much passion goes into winter sports in Germany. Fans are cheering the first athlete and waiting for the last athlete, and that is exactly what you want."

Tagging the German bid as the "Festival of Friendship," a 2018 Games in Bavaria would be an opportunity for this region to offer amends for past Olympics gone wrong, namely the 1936 Winter Games that Hitler dominated, and the 1972 Munich Summer Games at which a terrorist group killed members of the Israeli Olympic team.

Bavarians talk openly about their difficult Olympic history and seem eager to make things right. They've recently opened a museum in the ski town of Garmisch-Partenkirchen recounting the Nazi's effect on the '36 Games, and lead tours through Munich explaining the role this capital of Bavaria played in Hitler's rise to power.

If the 2018 Games do go to Bavaria, much of the Olympic infrastructure already exists. Munich's Olympic Park, designed for the '72 Games, is slated to host the Opening and Closing Ceremonies. Curling will take place on top of the swimming pool built for '72, and the stadium in which Olga Korbut made gymnastics uber-popular will be iced over to stage figure skating's long and short programs. Only arenas for hockey and speed skating remain to be built. The entire complex is just across the street form the new BMW Museum, a spectacle in itself that traces the fine-tuned and superbly engineered history of the Bavarian Motor Works.

Alpine skiing is slated for the nearby ski town of Garmisch-Partenkirchen, a pretty village dominated by a high-steepled church and cobbled square at one end, and the massive Zugspitze, Germany's highest peak, at the other. The Olympic downhill itself will take place on the same 3.3-km Kandahar track on which Canada's Erik Guay became 2011 downhill World Champion in February -- a happy fact that can only mean good karma for competing Canadians.

As for the enormously popular German bobsleigh and luge, it's the Berchtesgaden track in Konigssee, built in 1968, that will get the Olympic honours if the Games come to town -- a track also well loved by Canadians. At the February 2011 World Championships in bobsleigh, Canuck Olympic champs Kaillie Humphries and Heather Moyse won Canada's first ever bobsleigh World Championship medal -- a bronze -- at Berchtesgaden. When asked how the track would work in 2018, Vancouver 2010 gold medal winner Humphries said: "I don't really have favourites, but this Berchtesgaden track is definitely at the top of my list. They always get big, huge crowds and that's really fun. Germans really know how to do it up."

Whether the Bavarians "did it up" enough in February to win the 2018 Winter Olympic bid won't be revealed until July 2011, when the IOC reveals its choice. Successful or not, Bavaria will remain a winter sport-friendly region that's kind to Canadians, not to mention a really good spot to ski, view a Disney-esque castle, and nosh on beer and bratwurst.

Follow Lori's adventures on snow at loriknowles.com or on Twitter @LoriExploring