Teatime stories

When talking about the Polish tea drinking habits, I should start with the fact that they drink a lot (of tea; of course they drink a lot of other stuff too :-)) but that’s another story). They have probably the largest consumption per capita in Europe, after UK, of course. And still growing. They drink it every day, several times a day. For breakfast (like British), if not coffee drinkers and they definitely drink it along with their usual sandwich-based dry dinner. They produce a lot as well. Most of the tea on the Romanian market comes from Poland. I was surprised to find that out, after curiosity drove me to read the packages, that Belin, Teekanne or Celmar, the most famous tea brands in a Romanian supermarket (besides Lipton) are all Polish brands. Even the no-name tea in discount supermarkets comes from Poland. Still Romanians don’t have much of tea-drinking culture. It was very funny a few months ago, while in Romania with my Polish workmate, when he ordered green tea in a restaurant on the Black Sea shore, the waitress asked “Would Lipton be OK?” “Of course” and she brings him Lipton Green Ice Tea. And then he said “I meant hot tea” “Oh! Is everything all right? Are you ill?” OK, so that’s fact. It’s not very common to order tea in a Romanian restaurant or coffeehouse, needless to mention pubs. We usually drink it at home and it’s mostly herbal tea, for pharmaceutical purposes, so we shouldn’t blame the poor waitress for getting a bit confused. It’s all about climate after all. That’s why, in a coffeehouse in Poland, if you are not a coffee drinker and you are not very fond of juices, you’d most probably order tea (not plain water with lemon like in Romania :-)), normal tea. But watch out what you’re ordering, because in Poland, normal tea means black tea (not like in UK where normal tea is every kind of tea that comes from the tea plant e.g. black, green, white, or oolong). But even if it’s black tea, don’t expect to get milk with it, I never got and I have never seen a Pole drinking it with milk. Instead it’s very probable that you get lemon. Besides “normal” tea they usually drink berry flavoured tea. Most of the Poles that I met hate mint or lime tea, which are the most popular in Romania. They don’t make it strong when they drink “normal” tea. Usually the infusion takes no more than 30sec. At home they even infuse only one teabag for the whole teapot. Maybe that’s why they don’t drink it with milk.
By far the most bizarre remark would be the word for “tea” in Polish. In most of the languages in the world and all the European languages besides Polish and Lithuanian this word is derived from the Malay “teh", from Amoy Chinese dialect “t'e”, or Mandarin “ch'a”. It has developed in the European languages based on two roots: either “te-” (in all Western languages) or “cha-” (in most Slavic languages, in Greek and Turkish or even Romanian – “ceai”). But it’s not the same story with the Polish “herbata” or the Lithuanian “arbata” (that probably came from the more influential Polish). Who knows what the story behind this word is, but one thing is sure - they have a long history in being special about it.
Nevertheless, the best tea I have ever drank was in a krakowian "kawiarnia", a place called Camera Café (very nice atmosphere and they project classic movies, mostly mute, so you can even watch while enjoying your drink or your ice-cream topped hot apple pie). The recipe is not complex at all, but the mix of flavours is simply amazing. I won’t tell you, you’ll have to come to Krakow to try “Smak lata” (“Summer savor”). Besides, they’re paying me big money for this post :-))

Well, what can I say, maybe at the beginning “herbata” wasn’t my cup of tea, but I sure enjoy it now, especially that it’s a legitimate alternative, for a change, to a non coffee drinker like me.