Desperate Serbwife

The elusive English Breakfast tea

So I have officially been a resident of Belgrade for one week today. Not too bad so far - the weather sure has cooperated and been sunny and in the 70's the whole time - although it's supposed to get colder next week.

Each day has been pretty similar, I wake up late, shower (great shower, lots of water pressure!), go on my treasure hunt, cook something interesting, hang out with Mike. Besides the hanging out with Mike part, the treasure hunt is certainly my favorite part of my day....although sleeping in is fun too, but I'm really starting to digress.

Anyway, each day I make myself a list of things to get at the market or around town. Mostly I have easily found vegetables at the market and stuff to drink at the local grocery stores (and I mean storeS because each "grocery store" is actually a tiny little place like the little stores on the streetcorners in new york city and they all tend to have the same stuff packed onto their tiny shelves and I have to go to more than one to find all I need). But each day I have added a few harder to find items such as a non-wood cutting board or an ice tray for the freezer - today's item is a bathmat that goes around the toliet to keep our feet warm against the cold tile floor in the "poop bathroom."

I am quite proud of myself each time I find something from my list because most things are not typically sold here, but there is one thing that has been on my list every day and has eluded me: English Breakfast tea. Now, it's not that I actually drink that much tea, but the fact that I can not find this product has automatically elevated it's importance - at this point it's pretty much all I can look for during my daily treasure hunt. I'm totally obsessed. Mike has never had to talk about tea as much as he has in the last week. I even bought a box of tea yesterday in hopes that it was English Breakfast (I mean it did have a picture of green leaves and yellow flowers on it - as opposed to the picture of fruit on most of the other teas). Well, it was not English Breakfast. I think it was some kind of medicinal tea that you drink when you're sick - but I might have deduced that from the note written in English on the inside cover of the box - too funny not to share:

"Characteristics and effects
This tea is vary popular remedy which provoke perspiration in different cases of influence and against diarrhea. In combination with other herbs is useful against convulsions and for elimination of different kinds of pain as very mild remedy."

Sounds like a tea you want to drink, no? Me either. I think I will continue my quest for the EB tea today. I'll let you know how it all turns out, I know you're on the edge of your seat waiting to find out!



PS. Aren't you impressed that I was able to include a mention of both poop and diarrhea in a posting about tea? I know that you were worried that I had gone 4 postings without a mention of my favorite subject - but no worries, I can not squelch the real Brooke for long!

posted by Brooke @ 5:21 AM