Tea in a Foreign Country

I think it is only the Irish and the British who are enthusiastic, ritual tea drinkers. Nearly every emergency is met with by making a cup of tea. And we have our set rules for making this aromatic drink.
First of all, if you are a genuine tea drinker, you will have a china teapot and loose tea leaves. The kettle is boiled, a drop of boiling water is swirled around the teapot to warm it, then the loose tea leaves are added (I learned: a pinch for each person and one for the pot) and then the boiling water is added. After that, it is a matter of whether you like it "weak" or "strong", with milk of course and very often with a spoon of sugar. If you were careful how you poured it our, most of the tea leaves stayed in the pot and a few only ended up at the bottom of the cup. There was a tradition (almost certainly not in the finest families) of upending the teacup into its saucer and telling your fortune on the shape of the tea leaves which fell out. My mother could always make out a ship or an airplane or a bag of gold in the messy wet tea leaves, all of which caught our imagination.
Nowadays I use teabags because they are less messy although I know a few true blue tea drinkers who buy their tea leaves loose. But I still "warm" the mug before pouring boiling water on the tea bag. And I like to sit quietly and enjoy the tea. Now, coffee is a different matter. I drank a lot of coffee in my working days and I always associate it with working at something as I drink it. 
Love and scandal are the best sweeteners of tea is a quote from Henry Fielding and there is a lot of truth in it. What better way to pass an afternoon than gossiping about all our acquaintances while sitting around a tea table with a cake stand in the middle which groans under the weight of delicious little tea cakes of all kinds? 

Mainland Europe does not have the same affinity for tea as we do. Recently, when I was in Amsterdam, I stopped at the Tourist Centre and ordered Dutch apple tart (delicious!) and tea. This is what I got, fellow tea drinkers, prepare to weep with me:

 

Actually, it tasted quite good despite appearances but give me the real thing any time! And I used some of that cream on the apple tart to put in my tea. 

Time for a cuppa!