Kraut teabloggging

Those of you who don't read German might want to move along at the outset. Or if you really like facebook. I've seriously considered shutting down my facebook account for a while now. It was intriguing when I first signed up and was able to connect with friends I thought I'd never see/talk to again. The downside is that there are plenty of people I reconnected with on facebook that I now rememberwhy I never wanted anything to do with them in the first place.

But there are times when I go there and find something interesting. Rarely, but it does happen.

How I found this group of German tea enthusiasts, I don't know. But there they were. My friendship request was accepted, or whatever it is one calls it when being let into a group on facebook. Now I get an email update every single time someone writes a post or comments on said post. I could do without that part. Am sure there's a way I can disable these alerts, but I'd rather complain about it than actually doing anything to change it.

But now there's this whole new world of teablogs in German in which I'm excitedly immersing myself.

So here's the one that got it started: ZiehZeit. It's written by a guy called Bert F. Boege, and I'm pretty sure he's the one who started the facebook group. The blog is well written and it's clear this is someone to know if you want to know about tea drinking/blogging in Germany.

One of the topics big in tea right now is the safety of Japanese tea. Herr Boerge links to a very thorough article (Wie sicher ist japanischer Grüntee jetzt?) written by Thomas M. Grömer, who's also known as the Tee Papst (the tea pope). I'm not kidding. The pope of tea.

Here, look at his site yourself: TeePapst

Then there's Stephan Kockmann, who's responsible for Tee-Tagebuch (tea diary). There's too much good information for me to go into it here, but a lot of care has gone into this site. I also like that he reads Alex Zorach's blog. Small world.

Herr Kockmann does a series of blogposts I like where he interviews tea friends. Reminded me of the Tyros of Tea interviews that Jordan M. Williams used to do.

Another one I found on the ZiehZeit list was a guy called Marc in Bremen. He's been at this teablogging lark since 2006, and his blog is: Cha Tao.

He blogs, he sells teashirts, and his site is a fantastic source for what's going on in the world of tea. The layout, as well as the site in general, is really attractive.

Seems like the world of German language tea blogging is a male dominated endeavour if you go by this list, but there's a Taiwanese woman, Meng-Lin Chou, in Switzerland who has created something quite exquisite. It's called Tee erleben (tea experience) and it certainly is that.

Finally, I wouldn't be doing an adequate (but limited) review of German tea blogs if I didn't mention TEEorsten. He's not a proper teablog like the others. Meaning he doesn't deal primarily with tea. Tea appears to be part of his whole lifestyle, but he also blogs about whiskey and neckties and tea, of course.

Like I say, this is not an exhaustive list. There were plenty more on ZiehZeit's above-mentioned page, and I'm sure there are plenty of others. These are simply the ones that jumped out at me. I'm sure I'll be talking about these blogs and the things I learn there in the near future.

The extra g in the title is for German goodness.