Paul asked, shrugging deeper into his down jacket. “For the experience,” I answered. “And you can’t get a carrot this fresh in a grocery store.” I handed him one of the carrots in my basket to prove my point. He turned it over, looking unimpressed. “It’s a carrot. Any one of the fifty stores we passed on our way to get here would have had exactly the same thing. For half the price and double the temperature.” He tossed it back in my basket and ambled to the next vendor who was peddling some kind of liquid steaming from a kettle. “But we would have missed out on all the stimulating conversation,” I mumbled, wandering over to him. I didn’t understand how he couldn’t find the cornucopia of noises, scents, and wares of Munich’s oldest open-air farmer’s market, the Viktualienmarkt, enthralling. It was as whimsical as a circus and as comforting as my mom’s strawberry-rhubarb pie. Basically, heaven. I only wished I’d discovered this gem weeks ago. “So experience thing aside,”
