第696期:Tea Time

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Tu: So, I heard that Iran is very famous for its coffee?

Amir: Well, not coffee actually, the tea.

Tu: The tea? What is special about it?

Amir: Well, we love tea. We have to drink tea. Some of the people, if they don't drink two or three glasses of tea, cups of tea, they have headaches.

Tu: Headaches.

Amir: Yeah, yeah, yeah. And they are very much picky about the color of the tea. Everybody orders differently. Some people say pour very colored strong tea. Some people say, "No, No, I don't want it that strong." The medium. Everybody has their own taste.

Tu: So, I guess you got a lot of tea shops.

Amir: Yeah, yeah, we have traditional one, which is very interesting for the tourists I believe, where you go in and you sit down, no chairs there, and it's actually cushions just behind you, so you can lie on this cushions and you know, kind of like lying position. You can straighten your legs and the servant will bring you tea.Actually, the drinking tea in Iran is a little different from other countries.

Tu: Different? How?

Amir: Well, we have a glass or a cup of tea, and beneath that we have something called estikan, which you put the glass or cup on that, and, well, the way you drink it is that you have to pick up the cubic sugar. It is a cubic. It's not like other powder of sugar. You pick it up and then you tip it inside the tea a little bit. When it gets the most, you put it inside your mouth, and you drink tea when the cubic sugar is in your mouth.

Tu: It takes time.

Amir: That's the way you drink it. You will get used to it. Just try once. It's actually good.

Tu: Do you go there often?

Amir: Once a year. Yeah.

Tu: Once a year! Okay. It's interesting. I will try.