Thank you Amsterdam!

So what information could I find about the Netherlands? The root for "Holland" apparently means wooded land, and "Netherlands" means low lying land. They are one of the world's most densely populated countries with close to 90% of the population living in urban areas. While the population tends to be older, Amsterdam is a center of youth culture.

As usual, I went to YouTube and typed in, "how to make tea in the Netherlands". I get an odd assortment of videos about Holland, and Amsterdam. Ah, yes, a country known by several names, and most known for its capital city. I paused for a moment to wonder if I would find anything about tea here. After all, Amsterdam is known for all forms of vice being legal. I actually had a layover in the Amsterdam airport when I was going to Kenya (ah, yes, KLM, Royal Dutch Airlines). Our red eye flight from Nairobi to Amsterdam arrived early, and we had to circle over the city until 6 AM when the noise ordinance was lifted and we could land. I was rather tired at that point, but I remember getting the impression of lots of town houses. We also circled out over the Atlantic, and it was interesting watching the pattern of the breakers near shore. While the other students in our group were looking forward to getting back to a more familiar way of life after spending a month in rural Kenya, they had one particular thing in mind when we got to Amsterdam. While you can't get all manner of vice in the airport (or at least you couldn't 19 1/2 years ago, I don't know about now), they were well known for having a casino and smoking cafes that offered more than just the traditional tobacco cigarettes.

Looking up tea in Netherlands on YouTube didn't really come up with anything spectacular. I got the sinking feeling that this would be a bust like so much of Europe is turning out to be. Also known as Holland, the Netherlands are famous for windmills, tulips, and being below sea level. There are several towns on the west side of this state with Dutch heritage (and they are not necessarily close together). One is a college town, and the other hosts a large tulip festival in the spring although the tulips rarely cooperate with blooming during that festival. The Netherlands are known for being a very liberal nation with legal (but tightly regulated) prostitution, marijuana (and other drug use), and euthanasia. They were also the first nation to legalize same sex marriage. Unfortunately, they have also gotten caught up in populist politics in the last 20 years, and have become much less friendly to immigrants. After reading that, and looking at the population demographics, I had to look up Dutch colonies in Africa. I knew that they certainly had an influence on the continent in the past (mostly on the west side it seemed to me). It seems hard to find a good map. Some don't even show Dutch colonies at all, but I don't know when they gave up their pieces of Africa. It also seems that they held very little ground, but had a known influence in the region. I didn't see anything on the main linked page about the international flower markets in Amsterdam, but I know from my tour of a commercial rose greenhouse in Kenya, that they send all of their flowers to Amsterdam to be sold. I'm assuming that this is still true almost 20 years later.

I was pleasantly surprised when I looked for tea in Amsterdam. Not only do they like tea, but they like doing fun things with it. THANK YOU AMSTERDAM! One more reason they are the coolest city on earth. The person touring the tea hot spots in the city starts with the cat cafe. Like it sounds, they have lots of cats who live there, and tolerate the human vermin who come in. The video has several shots of cats enjoying a nice scratch behind the ears, and a few who would rather not be bothered. Their next stop was a tea bar. They focus on making beautiful drinks. You can get a blooming tea flower in a martini glass. They also show show tea served up in wine glasses. I've actually heard of drinking tea out of a wine glass before, because the glasses are designed to capture the aroma of the drink. Serious tea drinkers sometimes use wine glasses to enjoy the scent while drinking. I've tried this before. I hoped that nobody would see me drinking out of my wine glass in the morning (since I was enjoying a tea with caffeine). Their last stop was in the red light district. The woman in the video said she didn't really like going to that part of town because it was so touristy. There, they had a bubble tea shop. While she did get a bubble tea, she said she really doesn't like that style of tea. I have to agree on both counts. I don't care anything about going to the red light district, and I don't like bubble tea either.

I will admit that it felt fun to take a wine glass full of tea back to my computer one afternoon. I think the bright teas shown in the wine glasses were mostly hibiscus based, so they were bright red. I finished my bright red herbal teas, so I had blueberry herbal. It made an interesting color.

So I got up one Sunday morning and decided to transgress a bit. Well, more than normal, I recently went to one of my favorite tea shops and got white champagne raspberry tea. You guessed, it! First drink of the morning comes out of a wine glass (with no alcohol involved). (Okay, the Titanic reproduction glass has nothing to do with the Netherlands, I just felt like using that glass this particular morning.)