I just finished my cup of coffee.
The brand is Markus, it's dead cheap and plain good.
Great value for money :)

A tea place just opened at my somewhat local mall called Teavana. I guess it's a chain, but I've never heard of it before. I bought 2 different teas: Imperial Acai Blueberry (white) and Rooibos Tropica. Rooibos Tropica wasn't for me, as it was a bit too earthy. Almost like Oolong! Imperial Acai Blueberry on the other hand, is amazing. This is their site:

Teavana | Buy Tea Online: Green tea, Oolong tea, Black tea, White tea, Herbal tea and more!

A tea place...
These things are extinct here.
Everything is a chain or a supermarket here.
There's almost no existence possible for small independant firms.
Even the little electronics stores and music stores are dying unless they are really really good.
Pity :(

Now, I know that's a lie, cause my mum always asks my sister to bring home some tea when she's coming back from Utrecht, which means that there are specialist tea shops in at least Utrecht or Amsterdam! Plus you have places like Concerto in Amsterdam, which has to be one of my favourite music stores ever <3

As for my preference, currently Tea, though one day, my gf will probably get me hooked on coffee. And from that day forward, my sleeping patterns will be officially ****ed.

The bigger cities like The Hague, Amsterdam and Utrecht are real exceptions there.
And even in those cities it's getting less every time I get there.
In the smaller towns and cities, the little shops are disappearing.
The nearest real city overhere is Sittard which used to have four independent music shops.
Now there's only one and one of the others is now a Free Record Shop, which is a chain again.
Concerto is brilliant, indeed. Love that shop, but Amsterdam is more than 200 kilometres away from here so I don't get there often.
My own music store is the Music Machine in Sittard. These guys have known me since I was 14 years old so it always feels like coming home when I enter the shop. I more than once stayed there after the shop closed, drinking coffee and talking politics. Brilliant :)

Edit: It's nice to see so many people have some or another connection to the Netherlands. To me it's an insignificant little country :)

It played a big part in my music taste! Considering like 90% of my Electronic Music is from there. Especially Trance. Joop, Rank 1, Ferry Corsten, Ron van den Beuken, etc. SO many names.

Yeah, you might not like to hear this, but that's one of the sides of the Netherlands I don't like.
You don't want to know the scene here man, it's awful.
I'm sure you're a great guy, but the people listening to that music here are... Well, not my kind, to say the least. It's really a mainstream thing here but that could be very different abroad.

Oh I know. Considering how many artists are from there, I couldn't see how it wouldn't almost be like Pop. Here though, well, in Gym class I was shocked to hear Eric Prydz - Call on Me. This is due to the fact that the extent of Electronic music that's known around here is Sandstorm and Zombie Nation. I used to heavily be into Trance, but not nearly as much anymore. I've gone on to all kinds of other genres. I still enjoy it here and there though.

Just so that I'm not completely derailing the topic: Teavana just came out with 24 new teas! I hope to maybe try another white tea. Maybe a green one as well. I've got my eyes on Arcadian Apple ("A sweet blend of green and white teas with a touch of ambrosial papaya, pineapple and ripe orchard apples"):

http://s7d5.scene7.com/is/image/Teav...BvjJpp3G6LHxI5

and Youthberry White Tea ("In this tea blend, the acai berry is finely ground and carefully sifted into white tea tips and tropical fruit pieces"):

http://s7d5.scene7.com/is/image/Teav...Xxoldjcc8Vjq-G

My hot beverage of choice is mate, popular in Uruguay and Argentina.

http://www.purplesage.org.uk/images/...3966501_XS.jpg

I like coffee too, but this gives me energy without the jitters, sort of like relaxed, contemplative energy.

I actually got to try some of that! It was from Teavana. It wasn't pure mate though. I'm pretty sure it was this one.

Hm, that would be interesting to try, considering the only two hot beverages I drink are coffee and mate. It kind of disturbs me though that there's no green in the picture...

You should try pure mate though, the bitterness gets a little getting used to though. I like my coffee black though so I guess I'm just a bitter beverage kind of guy.

Ah yeah. I'm not big on bitter. I know Black tea is bitter, to me anyway, but the Mate I had wasn't bad. It had an interesting earthiness to it that I really liked. It had a really subtle chocolate note as well which was really nice.

The way you two talk about it you really make me want to try it out.
But as I said, these shops are rare here. I Could try a reform thingy.. If that's still there.

Just had a nice cup of jasmine but I've been drinking a lot of Sleepytime lately. That stuff has an amazing flavor.

http://ecx.images-amazon.com/images/...A300_SH20_.jpg

Definitely do so! Well, if you can. Teavana ships internationally. I'm sure there's other Tea sites but I don't know them. I had no idea there was anything like this. It's all new to me!

I'll have to try that again. I tried that one and Chamomile. I definitely didn't like the Chamomile one. It was too mellow for my liking, and my stepmom put too much sweetner. It tasted like mellow sugar water with some florals.

Sleepytime does have chamomile in it, but there's a lot of other flavors too, like peppermint, lemon grass, bunch of others...

Awesome tea.

Teavana! I love that place! Not only do they have some awesome tea blends, but they also have some beautiful tea cups and tea pots to boot.

Last time I was there I bought the Wild Orange Blossom Herbal Tea:
http://s7d5.scene7.com/is/image/Teav...04463_d?$cses$

So very wonderful. Perfect right before bed.

Found a new earl grey I can recommend :) Hampstead Tea's Organic Fairtrade Earl Grey tea. If there are any Earl Grey fans out there, you should check it out if you have the chance. It's quite fruity and fresh, but with a lot of taste and it's basically the best brand I've tried in quite some time. We found it at this health store my GF wanted to visit.

http://www.ethicalsuperstore.com/ima...025%20Bags.jpg

i truthfully can't stand tea, i've never really tasted coffee but i love the smell of it

I've gotten into ginger and lemon tea lately, it's best for me with a little bit of honey!

I used to work customer service for a coffee company (Gevalia) who actually had pretty darn good coffee. We'd get nice little incentives, like, if someone called to cancel an account and we were able to save the account, they'd give us a free box of coffee, blend of our choice.

I was a total junkie for the "Cafe Greco" blend, and I went out of my way to save a lot of accounts so that I could take home at least one box a week. It wound up being like, one box a day at one point, which was entirely too much coffee - so I started gifting friends with the coffee, and I was their hero for a period of time. :D

Just an FYI, though - the subscription based service for Gevalia coffee is kind of a scam, and really hard to get out of.

Oh yes! At mine they had that one blended with the Youthberry White Tea. It was unbelievable! It's what made me decide that I actually do enjoy some teas. I think it's great that they offer blends instead of just plain white, green, or black ones.

I am obsessed with tea. Tea is just the best.

At home I currently have available: Green tea, peppermint tea, camomile tea, lemongrass, white, black, earl grey, english breakfast, apple, cinnamon and plum, peach, vanilla, ginger and... probably more but I can't remember.

I love tea.

I've had this for the past couple of days:
http://www.myteabags.com/images/teab...tumn_Storm.jpg
And it's nice :)

does anyone drink nesquik? I've seen nesquik cereals and the bottles of chocolate milk already prepared in other countries but I can't remember seeing the chocolate powder, which btw, I love!!!!

neither coffee or tea

Damn, now I'm craving an earl grey. I better go have one then.

http://shop.goodearth.com/img/product/get-304005.jpg

It has a really strong cinnamon smell and taste and I really love cinnamon so this is my current favorite. I like peppermint tea or anything nice and herbal at night but during the day I prefer black teas. I looooove earl grey and english breakfast and used to really be into green teas - especially jasmine - but I've kind of gotten over that.

That being said coffee is my go-to energy source. I work at Peet's Coffee though and I can't stand the taste of it so I generally just down a couple shots of expresso at the start of my shift and then switch to tea. As far as drip coffee goes, the darker the roast the better. Probably the best coffee I've had comes from a little local organic coffee shop just down the street from my house.

I also like chai but I've yet to find a brand that is consistently satisfying. =\
And a word of caution to all you Californians, don't ever order chai from Peet's Coffee. Seriously, I don't know what we do but it's bad.

We have nesquick powder here. It's pretty common.

Though most of dus drink "Chocomel", which is a abbreviation (is that the right word?) of 'chocolademelk', which then means 'chocolate milk'.
Still, chocomel is a registered trademark. It's called CéCémel in French and Belgium, by the way. Chocomel is ready made chocolate milk of great quality. It comes in glass bottles, little or bigger milk cartons and plastic bottles (which taste bad, by the way).

By the way, just for fun:
http://i114.photobucket.com/albums/n...Overig/tea.jpg
The tea stock of an average dutch supermarket. Took this picture this afternoon
The tea I was looking for (chamomile) has been out of stock for weeks now :(.

Coffee actually makes me really sick.
I feel like I've said that before, have I posted in this thread already?

You've recently said that in a PM to me :).
(not a very mysterious déja vu, this one)

Hehe, true! Maybe that's what I was thinking of!!

That's really not a lot of tea to choose from. Over here we have shelves and shelves and walls and walls of different teas in our supermarkets! Which is how I have developed quite an obsession. And chamomile is one of the most common ones!

I think earl grey is most common here.
This supermarket has quite a large amount of tea compared to others.

Haha, show your supermarket :).

Really? We just must really love tea here, must be the British in us...
I promise to take a picture of our tea selection next time at the supermarket, it looks basically the same as yours but x4.

Haha, that's very welcome.

Would it be a good idea to open a 'show your...'-topic and show something different that's easy to take a picture of like every week? Just a thought.
Seems fun to me, but then I'm always overly interested in the way common life in other countries goes...

Everybody here drinks tea. I just think the dutch aren't into much variety?
I heard some americans on TV a couple of years ago who were baffled that the Dutch don't mind having bread with cheese for lunch. Neither do I, I love cheese :)

Do you black tea drinkers add milk or sugar? Maybe it's just me, but I never add either, especially not to Earl Grey.


I can't help but be reminded of this :D

:love:

And I usually don't add milk or sugar either! Occasionally I will add a little bit of sugar or honey if I make it too strong... but usually go without.

Neither do I. :D

The character in that vid is surely a newb. Many if not most of those sound like infusions, not tea. ;)

Teas of course have to have Camellia sinensis in them.