Some people start their story at the start of the story, others at the start of the next story. As I did last post. So wat about those three combined that I mentioned…
At the Festeaval I was reintroduced to the Global Tea Hut (GTH) of which I have been a member for a few years a few years ago. For those that don’t know what the GTH is: Extremely summarized the GTH is a Taiwan based worldwide organization that brings people together to drink tea. For a better description see their website.
As part of this endeavour they have groups all over the world and a tea with magazine membership. Excellent tea by the way that is often specially produced for the GTH members.
Unfortunately there was no group in the Netherlands a few years ago (as far as I know) so my membership “only” consisted of the magazine and the excellent tea which I enjoyed for several years till my income dropped…
So at the Festeaval I was happily surprised: there is an active group now in the Netherlands (shared with Belgium, but that’s more than ok). So after the Festeaval I went to their facebook page and subscribed.
A few weeks later there was organized a trip to fetch some water at one of the few places in this part of the world where you can tap your own water from a natural spring. So I signed up and thanks to C and A I could actually get there.
So with C, A, X we took the road to pick up J in Antwerp and from there we travelled to Heverleebos for a lot of water and some tea.
The Minnebron. The water actually tastes a lot better than it looks on this picture…
There we met others that joined the GTH meeting and a lot of other people that collected many bottles and jerry-cans. We filled the many bottles and jerry-cans that we had with us.
After filling up and we stored the water in the cars we went for a little walk.
“Onze-lieve-Vrouw van Steenbergen”-chapel build in 1651 to add some religion to the healing powers of the Minnebron-water.
Once we found a suitable place we had a very nice meditative tea ceremony in the forest. Some Mao Feng was served. The tea was sourced by GTH and X participated in the plucking and processing of this batch. One of those things you can do when you go to the GTH-center in Taiwan for a while.
The leftovers of the ceremony
It was a very pleasant trip where a met new tea-people and experienced a few ways of living with tea that I knew only about but never experienced before. Two things that I’ve build on since.
I want to thank C and A again for taking me with them, X and J for adding to the pleasure in the car, JR and T for the more than nice ceremony and of course all others present to increase the joy.
Global Tea Hut Netherlands and Belgium
(*) As far as I know, I don’t have a kingdom. If I turn out to have one, I will reconsider the proposition and have the right to give you some water instead. With some tea in it of course.
Some art made from garbage at the parking lot
You have a tea kingdom full of spies (or of mathematical formulas, the A, C, J, X…). Beware of them 😛
Yeah they might cause me to drink more good tea 😉