For now I must cultivate my garden

There's very little on God's earth better than a beer garden and Munich is the best place to experience one.  Why are they so tremendous?  Because when you're there you can sit at a bench, surrounded by trees, have a conversation and drink a beer.  Also, they smell nice (like roasting pork or smoked fish).  Did I leave anything out?  What exactly is there to leave out?  A beer garden captures everything in your life that you're striving for, but have forgotten is your actual aim.  You may think that you're working hard to provide a comfortable quality of life for yourself and your family, some breathing space to bask and relax in, a tiny patch of ground you can call your own where no one will bother you: what you're really breaking your back for is a few hours in a beer garden.  There's nothing more to achieve and nothing that anyone can take away from you.  That bit of room and that bit of time is yours, yours alone.  Soak it up, you've earned it.  And if not, you can rent it for a while.

Beer gardens are God's own reward for having done a little something right on this planet and we'd be much the poorer without them.  I'm going to take my daughter to one this weekend.  She'll play in the gravel and I'll sit and stare at her and think about not much at all.  It's almost enough to make a man get religion.

God's gentle mercy on you Munich.  If I love you for nothing else, I love you for this.