This morning started with a standard breakfast. At least, it was standard for me as an aboriginal Hungarian. I have never wondered about how weird an average Hungarian breakfast can be for a non-Hungarian. To tell the truth, there was no problem with the ham and the jam, but with the tea. Every people who was brought up in Hungary knows how a real kindergarten(school)-tea is about: it is more than really-really sweet and has an inexpressible and doubtless artificial flavour (most of us love tea with lemon and sugar in Hungary – but in school there are only money for the cheap sugar; not for quality tea and lemon), but we Hungarians are absolutely used to it, so we don’t even realise these facts about it (even more: it gives us a nostalgic feeling wondering about our childhood). But when three people coming from those tea-trading countries have this tea(?) in their hands, everything is mixed up. I’ll tell you what happened. I was sitting at the table in front of Rupesh, when he started to drink his tea having no doubt that he was going to drink a classic English tea. You’d have had to see his face when he realised that it is not a tea in the classical sense. ‘What is that?’ he asked with a face expression that I cannot forget until I live. Not because it was unforgettable; the unexpected surprise made it a must-to-remember moment. The same face expression and question arrived with Chris’ tasting of the essence. I couldn’t bear it without laughter. Why I am writing this is to show how undrinkable can be a tea that is loved by millions of Hungarians for people that are used to quality English tea. It is just a tiny difference, but I reckon it does make sense, because that shows how different we are even in very-very little, everyday things.
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