Summertime surely is time for outdoor activities and pleasures. Besides the broad spectrum of more or less strenuous activities, summer is perfect for socializing in parks, restaurants, cafes or beer gardens. We might think of this as more recent inventions, but in historical depictions by Bruegel or Jan Steen (1661 in Gemäldegalerie Berlin, extract below) we find evidence that socializing in a restaurant or beer garden has been around for more than 460 years. Monks were brewing beer and the consumption was reserved to a more elitist group of people. The concept is quite old. Fortunately, we have managed to democratize the joyful and socializing part of being together. Places where people from different social classes come together have always been rare and this, additionally, varies across regions, countries and often social strata.
