drinking tea out of jam jars

Found an interesting article in the print edition of the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung (Wednesday 24 August 2011), but unfortunately I wasn't able to locate it on their website. You'll have to rely on my questionable retelling of it.

There's not actually much to it. It's an article telling the stories of three different Turkish people living in Germany, and the headline of the first one is 'Tee tranken sie aus Marmaladengläsern' (They drank tea out of jam jars).

Mehmet Kaymaksiz talks of what it was like when he first arrived in Germany in 1964:

'Es gab nicht so wie heute in jeder Stadt Dönerladen oder türkische Einkaufmärkte, die ersten Monate haben wir unseren Tee aus Marmaladengläsern getrunken.'

(It wasn't like it is now. There weren't Kebab stands or Turkish shops in every city or town. The first month we drank our tea out of jam jars)

I thought all three stories were fascinating, but this one glimpse of what it was like to be a guest worker in a strange land stuck out for me. And that no matter how difficult it might've got later, he could always look back and say to himself, 'Well, at least I never had to drink tea out of a jam jar again.'

Maybe not. Tea out of any receptacle seems like it'd still be tea. Delicious and refreshing nevertheless. Might have to go polish off some of my favourite jam jars.