an as yet unheralded tea people in Munich

Altes Rathaus in Munich

Peter at Tea Trade had an idea this summer that I'd already considered, but it was nice to hear it from another source. When tea lovers are going to Munich, I want them to think Lahikmajoe. Of course many of you would. You know I'm here because I write about it all the time.

But I was doing an internet search this week, and on a whim I searched 'Munich' + 'tea' expecting to see myself well represented. Go ahead and try it. I'm not represented at all. This has to be corrected.

For one thing, I don't often include the word tea in my tags. And even though I've written about teashops and tea salons here in my adopted home, I should keep talking about my favourite places and their tea here. There's quite a selection.

If you happen to be travelling through Germany and find yourself here in the capital of beer consumption,  I want you to know of your tea drinking options. If I happen to be in town at the time, I'd love to meet you in one of those shops to share a pot of tea or three. When you think 'Munich' and 'tea', I want you to think Lahikmajoe. I don't think that's too much to ask.

Let me remind you of some of my favourite places here in the Bavarian capitol:

a general sense of well-being

That's all about the Tushita Teehouse, which is normally first on my list of places to take people here. There's also the sweet little shop around the corner called Laifufu, which I wrote about here:

Oolong Nirvana in the next street over

What about teashops? Well, my local shop is called teegalerie in Munich-Neuhausen. I was so excited this summer when he had some Flugtee for me:

finally a cup of first flush

There are quite a few other tea drinking and tea selling places here, and I plan to go into much more detail about them. From now on, I'd like to be much easier to find when people are looking for tea people in Munich. 

meeting old friends for the first time

Several months ago, I mentioned how excited I was to host some tea folk in my adopted hometown of Munich. The day has come and this weekend different people in the Tea Trade community will descend upon the Bavarian capitol.

What a joy not just to show off the surprising variety of tea shops here, but to be able to walk through the small passageways of the old city and remark on what's left of the medieval city.

We met up at the Tushita Teehaus, which I wrote about in a general sense of well-being.

In some ways, you'd expect seeing people you've never met would be unquestionably awkward. Nevertheless, the strange reality of virtual friendships means that some people you 'know' online have a much better picture of you than you'd first think. Meeting the Tea Trade folk was like reconnecting with old friends.

There was good natured ribbing that whatever was drunk and talked about would find its way onto my blog. All in good time. We did laugh about how terribly seriously we sometimes take ourselves. Or at least I did. Laugh at myself, I mean.

In the next several days, there's going to be plenty more of the same. There are a few surprises planned for the weekend and I'm sure in the next few months you'll hear both here and over at teatra.de what things are being cooked up in our corner of the tea world. You've been summarily warned.



the Theatine Church (Theatinerkirche) viewed from the Hofgarten.

planning to host fellow tea obsessives

This week I found out that a fellow tea obsessive that I met through twitter will be visiting Munich this summer. Actually a couple of tea obesessives. Should be quite the experience. Am already pondering where to take them for tea.

I go on and on about the meagre opportunities for decent tea drinking here in this city, but we do have tea shops/tearooms and I honestly can't wait to show these places off.

My visitors are already very familiar with the city of Munich, but in Southern Germany the people are much better known for their Kaffee und Kuchen (coffee and cake) than they are for their knowledge of tea and tea drinking. This is slowly changing. We have a budding tea culture.



There's the Tushita Teehaus, which I wrote about in a general sense of well-being, and then even closer is the Laifufu Teesalon, which I wrote about in Oolong Nirvana in the Next Street Over. (pictured on the left)






There's a very British place, which I'll talk about another time, where we could have cream tea, and if we're really ready to throw caution to the wind, there's always Afternoon Tea at Die Vierjahreszeiten (The Four Seasons).



So there's no reason for me to get overly excited just yet. Still have to wait several months for the opening ceremonies, but just going through our options for tea in Munich is making me thirsty.

a general sense of well-being

Because of the harbours in the northern cities of Hamburg and Bremen, tea companies/importers and tea houses are in abundance. Southern Germans certainly drink tea, but the tea culture is smaller. Having said all that, people do drink tea down here, and it seems those people are becoming more visible.

Part of that is because several tea shops and tea houses have opened in Munich in the last year or so. I've written about a few of them, but might spend some time going over them again.

Have talked in rather intricate detail about brewing tea and pouring it into a thermos, so I can have it on the go. I do that almost anytime I travel, whether I'm gone for several days or only the afternoon. As convenient as it is to slurp my best tea en route from here to there, the experience of sitting down in a tea house is unquestionably different.

So I had an hour or so between appointments today, and I treated myself to a trip to the Tushita Teehouse in the Glockenbachviertel near the Frauenhofer Straße U-Bahn station.

I'll go into much more detail about this place in another blogpost, because I'd like to focus on something else. Sometimes when you really slow down and take the time to enjoy the tea, an overwhelming feeling of calmness can result. I had a moment after the three infusions of the their Kukicha, where I was practically glowing. I didn't force myself to get up and do something else. I didn't rush off to catch the next train. I simply sat there and enjoyed that peaceful feeling that sometimes results from drinking tea.

I don't want to get esoteric here. There are plenty of times I drink a cuppa while working or while I'm on the run. It's not possible for me to always take this kind of time to slow down. But when I do...when I really put down my newspaper, turn off my phone, set aside whatever's going on outside in the street or in the world, I can appreciate the tea in an entirely other way.

If you're into tea, I'm sure I'm not telling you anything you don't already know. On another visit, I'll have my notebook and describe each infusion and the cup colour and whether I tasted something nutty or grassy...I do like that sort of thing. But this time I decided to experience all of those things but focus on the overall effect of the whole session. The way several cups of tea today really enhanced my general sense of well-being.

Here's a photo of the Kukicha leaves (this is a teablog, after all):