Global Tea Time

France is billed as being one of the most historically and culturally important countries in the Western world. They have had colonies all over the world hence the reason French is widely spoken across the African continent. I did not realize that they are the most important agricultural producer of Europe, or that they are one of the oldest countries in the world. I guess that's why they have 156 pages of information at the above link. Sorry, I'm not reading through all of them. I studied French for 4 years in Junior High and High School. I had 3 different teachers, but the first one was by far the best. Sadly, I never had an opportunity to use my French, and it has been largely forgotten. A few months ago, I came across some old cooking videos from Julia Child. They were the ones where she traveled to France, and showed the food products there. There were also segments where she would make something with a top French chef or baker to show techniques that people could use at

Today we travel to Scandinavia, more specifically, Denmark . They are at the end of a peninsula north of Germany, and they also have a group of islands stretching toward Sweden. When I went back to college in my mid twenties, there was a student in my program who was from Denmark. He studied abroad in this area when he was in high school, and fell in love with a girl he wanted to marry. So, he did all the paperwork to come back to this area to go to college, and they did indeed get married. I don't remember him talking about Denmark, and some people made fun of his accent, or made fun of him for asking questions in class. Sigh, people. Looking at the healthcare and social welfare system of Denmark really makes me wonder if he feels like moving to the states was such a good idea after all. Honestly, when we were in school I wondered why he would leave that wonderful system behind. In further reading, marriage has lost some social status (yay for all us single people), and domestic

According to the internet, there are 51 countries in Europe. That means that I should be spending close to a year there, traveling there by teacup. The reality seems to be that people in that part of the world really don't feel compelled to share anything meaningful about how people drink tea. After doing some research, I found that they are all very boring about their tea drinking (with a few exceptions). Most of the videos about making tea in Europe I have found are really snarky videos saying you take a tea bag, and pour hot water over it. Some are done in the style of the TV show " Drunk History ". Europe is going to be a challenge. I'm reminded of the beginning of Richard Dooling's short story "Bush Pigs" where he talks about the difference between Africa and Europe. In Africa everything is alive, and Europe is like visiting an old museum. While I'm still researching, I've found the usual scattering of countries were coffee or alcohol