A Czech Tea Experience

103 Days In, 8 Days Out

I'm hesitant to put this tea piece up because I don't really like it. I had to really trim it down from the original (which sucked, too) because of the short length of it. Well. Anyway. You can tell me what you think.



A Czech Tea Experience

I turned my map this way and that. “It’s around here somewhere,” I muttered to my friend as we turned a corner. We were searching for a tea room in a tower recommended by my friend Eva Sterecová, who had scoffed at my mention of the café culture and launched into an eager description of the tea rooms in Prague.

A few steps past the building on our left, we stopped cold in our tracks. My hand holding the map dropped to my side, forgotten. Ahead, a mystical, medieval-style tower loomed in front of us, mischievously defying the surrounding buildings. In the fading light, a top-floor platform overhung with arches made the tower look as if it had risen straight out of Arthur’s Camelot. It embodied flawlessly all the images of mystical Prague I had pieced together in my mind.

Up the circling stairs to the third floor we climbed. Just inside, we were greeted by a smattering of shoes left by the door. “Do we have to take off our shoes?” we asked the attendant, a college student named Jan. “Yes,” he replied kindly but unapologetically. It’s the way things are done there.

We settled down at a table, wiggling our toes delightedly, in a room lit dimly with scattered wall lamps. Around us, tatami bamboo mats lined the lower part of the faded, rose-colored walls, and a Buddha hung serenely on the opposite wall. A narrow staircase made of dark, burnished wood led to a loft where couples sat on cushions on the floor. It was a far cry from traditional images of prim English tearooms. Here, there were no sandwiches or cakes, only small cookies, pistachios, and halva kept in jars on the ledge. Here, I felt as though I had been transported to a distant corner of the Orient, a corner where time could pass by, lazy and unhurried.

The menus set in front of us were dark, earthy brown and loosely bound, with soft pages worn down from being repeatedly turned. Čína, Japonsko, Taiwan, they listed, all in Czech. Green tea, white tea, half-green tea, fruit tea, masala tea…

By the time Jan came to ask for our choice, our heads were spinning with the wondrous deluge of tea options presented by the deceptively unruffled menus. Laughing, Jan described several teas to us, until we settled on a Taiwanese half-green tea. My friend and I both have Taiwanese roots, and when all else fails we grasp at the familiar.

On this night, being alone in the tea room would have been an anomaly. Groups of friends filtered in. Couples held hands over a table. The door to a back room occasionally swung open and closed as a group prepared for a private party. I counted only a few people over 30. Jan told me that the tea room was a haven for the enthusiasts of alternative culture from the Orient, but I felt certain, as I watched a couple intermittently whispering and kissing at the next table, that at least on the evenings, the tea room provided a tranquil date alternative for the young crowd.

Our Taiwanese tea came in a plump, clay-brown pot, accompanied by olive bowls and a canister of boiling water. Jan left us with convoluted instructions on how to prepare the tea, and then left us to find our own way. We looked at each other, amused, pondering his directions. With a shrug, I went ahead and poured the tea. We weren’t tea experts, anyhow.

Out of the pot, it was a stunning, pale green-gold shade. I cupped my bowl and sipped the scalding tea slowly, enjoying the heat rising to my face and warming my hands. The comforting, fresh scent of the tea mixed with the incense burning nearby, creating an exotic blend of the foreign and the familiar. Music played continuously, flowing smoothly from throaty violins into African pipes. Even my wonder dissolved into dreamy relaxation at the top of this tower in Prague.

I was brought out of my reverie by the abrupt noises of the 20-somethings bustling noisily around getting ready for their party and interrupting the fluid song of the didgeridoo pipes. It was ironic that the noise was noticeable, I mused to myself, still too completely content to be bothered much by it.

Anywhere else in Prague, and I wouldn’t even have noticed.