August 20, 2004

They drink hot tea all the time!

Everyone is always drinking tea and it is the same tea and the same tea cups for the most part, all over the country! They drink it at the shops and at home and at the beach…All the time! There is even a current commercial making fun of the fact that Turks take their tea pots to the beach so I am not the only one to notice this. I heard they are so fond of tea because they don’t drink a lot of water in the first place and also it is boiled water so it is safer. This brings to mind how Belgium made beer as a purified water drink hundreds of years ago and Mexico drinks a lot of soda because it is safer than their tap water.
An additional reason for this tea obsession, which I heard from a Turk, is that it helps you adjust to the heat after cooling off after drinking the hot tea. I am curious about this last thought because ice tea is so popular in America in the summer. I thought we drank ice tea to cool off and so I don’t understand why drinking hot tea cools you off. Anyway, the jury is still out on this one. Maybe we are both right.

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