I don’t think that a lot of Ger­man peo­ple will come to Tacoma. So I write this arti­cle in Eng­lish. If it ever hap­pen you come to Tacoma near Seat­tle you really have to go to the “Mad Hat — The Tea Com­pany” in Com­merce Street (maybe they will move in the near future one street up the hill). Go there even if you don’t like Tea that much.
Jean­nine and me only went there for two rea­sons, first we were told that there is a tea shop and sec­ond we love tea. What we found was a lot of organic tea in quite unique atmos­phere. The tea is with­out arti­fi­cial fla­vor­ing. But one ot the first things we’ve seen was a dried, pressed Pu Err Tea from 2002. Nor­mally you don’t get this that easy and not for that price. So we decided to look more closely at this place. Tobin (if I remem­ber the name cor­rectly), the guy who owns the place, showed us his list of tea and asked if we wanted to try some. Jean­nine tried a Lemon Mate and I tried a Kava Mate. Accord­ing to Tobin Kava Mate will make you awake and brings you in a good mood. I guess it worked. After a lit­tle chat we told him that we where form ger­many and only here for a wed­ding. Sud­denly he answered us in Ger­man. Ask­ing him why he speaks Ger­man we were told that he lived till 1976 in Utrecht, Nether­lands. His fam­ily had to do with sell­ing wine and so he often vis­ited Ger­many in his child­hood. I was totally fas­ci­nated that he still remem­bers Ger­man that well. So we sit there for a cup of tee and enjoy­ing the atmos­phere in this place. If you ever lived in a “Wohnge­mein­schft” this is how a liv­ing room of a bing one should feel. Buzzing from the ideas and plans of a lot of peo­ple. If you don’t know what a “Wohnge­mein­schaft” is: Peo­ple decide to live together in a flat or a house shar­ing the kitchen and liv­ing rooms. It’s really com­mon in Ger­many, at least for stu­dents and some­times for older peo­ple as well.
So if you hap­pen to come to Tacoma and be there for either a short time go there and enjoy the place includ­ing the tea. And if you come to Tacoma and be there for a longer time go there to make con­tact with open minded peo­ple and at least one real character.