Tea: Appelsiininkukkatee (Orange blossom tea) / Flavoured white tea
Infusion: 70-75 'C / 4- 5 min.
One of the treasures in the charming street of Eerikinkatu, just in the centre of Helsinki, lies a beautiful tea house called Théhuone. It has white walls and shelves full of fascinating tea from all over the world, delicate cups and pots fullfilled with poetry of tea.
Théhuone was one of my first tea acquaintances in Helsinki, even in Finland. It has kept its status as of one of my favorite places to enjoy a quality cup of tea. The name 'Théhuone' is like a clever name play: 'huone' in Finnish is 'a room' and 'thé' is 'tea' in French. A tea house is translated in Finnish 'teehuone'.
This ethereal 'room' is so calming that you would like to spend there hours, hours... drinking tea and forgetting your own existence. Sometimes I even do that when I have, lets say once a year, a possibility for that. People should have that more often. Give up worrying too much of the past or future and just be in that moment. The world then just being in the teacup.
Théhuone was first just a shop, a room, which specialized in serving connoisseurs, and it was established six years ago.
Sisters Nina and Nea Lindgren had the idea for it after returning to Finland from abroad and noticing that there was no real teahouse in the whole city. Still there were people who enjoyed tea regularly. I talked to teahouse's worker Pilvikki Virtaperko who is as well a fellow musician with similar aesthetics in music, that is in early music (she is a professional harpsichord player). Besides that she is an active voluntary worker (she leads the Helsinki Zen center). Pilvikki is very happy in her current job at the Théhuone. According to her it is very down-to-earth basic work but still demands a lot of concentration. The calming frames are ideal for that though during the years the place has become very popular and can be buzzing with customers. Every pot of tea has to be perfect, you just need to do it right; like when a musician is preparing to play a concert, she compares. Otherwise the result doesn't taste so good! The repertoire of the tea collection being so wide it also demands constant learning to master it. She reckons there must be over 300 different teas on offer. Their most expensive tea at the moment is Ye Sheng Pu'Erh costing 750 € / kg!
My dear friend Helga Siljander is a fascinating woman from really far away of Finland. She is from Utsjoki and her home village is in Outakoski (just click to see it on the map!). She is a Sami. Now she has lived in Helsinki for four and half years and studies teology, social and moral philosophy and Sami culture. Nowadays there are quite a few Sami people in Helsinki and in other cities. Last autumn and summer Helga worked as a guide for an exhibition of the art inspired by Lapland in Ateneum (an art museum with the widest art collection in Finland). I went to see it three times and enjoyed it greatly! That made me want to go to Lapland and spend some time just in the nature's solitude and of course bring some tea with me. You can do your own tea there as well – as Helga's sister Suvi does from the local herbs and plants like angelica. I have tasted something like that and it was not bad at all! The nature there is very pure and fresh so you would assume to get very high quality nature products!
Helga is a both tea and coffee drinker. She says she prefers tea over coffee.
'Tea is for me an enjoyment. Coffee is a need.'
She needs her morning coffee cup to get started but for the rest of the day she goes with tea. Tea for her is a moment of pleasure, rest and luxury. She has noticed that her taste develops better all the time. It's becoming expensive! Also she needs different teas for different moods.
In Théhuone we ordered a pot of 'Appelsiininkukkatee' (Orange blossom tea), a white Pai Mu Tan tea with petals of orange blossoms and pieces of oranges. We were both very delighted and uplifted of its delicate taste. It made the gray day to feel like shining bright yellow! We both ended up buying 250 grams to take back home. A delicate sunshine is always an essential remedy to have it in hands! Our lovely tea moment passed imperceptibly talking about babies, teapots, all the stuff shops sell in the world, Lapland...
Helga's plea was quite thoughtful. She would like people to start to respect the elderly people and their parents and understand all the changes in life which are part of getting older. Every moment everyone is aging, also me and you! I think it's amazing how elderly people have made it so far in life in the perspective of time. You should definitely hear what they are saying because there is so much wisdom in what they have seen and experienced. Environment is different now than it was maybe fifty years ago. Stories from that time are interesting but the aspect of maturing as a human being could be more or less the same, or at least people experience similar issues in life.
I started to plan even more to visit Helga's home village next summer. She recommended visiting Lapland in summer or autumn because in winter it's mostly dark. In the summer the sun doesn't go down at all for some months! I remember Helga's story of his father. She had asked him about how he gets through the dark winter period called 'kaamos', a polar night, when sun doesn't come up at all for almost two months. He said he just thinks about the fish he is going to catch in the summer! That I would call a great attitude! But I would probably also need some Orange blossom tea...
