A Desire for Repetition

In an odd bit of timing, I just finished off my last two loose-leaf teas today. So I’ve now got four empty tins, and a need to get back to David’s Tea to stock back up. I’m just starting to get into tea; I pretty much gave up all other beverages besides water when I started trying to lose weight, so tea stepped in to fill the gap. I drank a decent amount of tea in college, but since then I haven’t really paid it much attention. At work we have a nice selection of black and green teas, but there generally isn’t much in the way of herbal teas, and since I try not to drink caffeine after 2pm or so, I had to start bringing in my own. Which is what got me in the door of David’s Tea. So far I’ve tried Forever Nuts, Bear Trap, Strawberry Rhubarb Parfait and Mighty Aphrodite. Mighty Aphrodite and Forever Nuts both were pretty weak. I vaguely liked the flavors, but there needed to be much more to them. I suspect if I could have steeped them with extra tea I might have liked them, but there’s only so much space in my tea strainer. Bear Trap was pretty good, a nice complex flavor. I absolutely adored Strawberry Rhubarb Parfait though. It was crisp and fruity and just the right amount of sour. I know I’m getting more of that one.

I also know I’m going back to Berlin someday. I went there over the summer — the trip was to celebrate getting a new job, and it was my first time setting foot in Europe. I was captivated by the whole city, and I thoroughly enjoyed every minute I was there, even though I got pretty sick the last couple days. I didn’t go with much of a plan, but I still managed to cover things well enough that by the time I finally asked the concierge for some recommendations, I had already done the first five or seven things he suggested. I’m considering doing a write-up of Berlin for this blog (later edit to link to this), starting a little section on travels like the section on book reviews, but I’m worried it was long enough ago that I wouldn’t be able to do it justice. I would like to add a bit of focus on travel to this blog. There are so many great travel blogs out there I can’t help but want to join their ranks. But I don’t know if I travel enough to justify the division of focus.

Keeping an ear to the ground when faced with new experiences is always advisable. Without the knowledge gleaned from paying attention, how could you make decisions about whether you want to repeat the experience or not?