In fact even before type inference I always thought that Dim was a better idea. It was kind of absurd to be forced to write your type twice.
Dim D as New Dictionary(Of String, String)
Dictionary<string, string> D = new Dictionary<string, string>();Var means variable.
In VB6/VBA, the Dim New syntax actually had different semantics; it would create the instance on first access instead of when the Dim statement was executed. It also had the fun side-effect that setting the variable to Nothing would destroy the instance but anytime you accessed that variable it would just create a new one. Irrelevant now, I guess, but still a nice bit of trivia.
var d = new Dictionary<string, string>();
`Dim`, a poorly worded keyword by today's standards, is a perfect example of the kind of leftover crap that C# doesn't have today that VB still does have.