First I should confess that I should have written down the good tips @lahikmajoe wrote to me (http://lahikmajoedrinkstea.blogspot.fr/2010/07/wiens-teehandlung-schonbichler.html) as I had no Internet connexion while I was in Vienna but after coming back, it seems I did rather well.

I didn’t manage to find this nice tea shop/salon and after reading through his article once more I am quite saddened, even though I was even more saddened to discover that a place with such a promising aspect had moved to an unknown address a few years ago.

Anyway, while in Vienna, I made three discoveries : one is Haas und Hass (even if @lahikmajoe had talked about it and I remembered more or less where it was supposed to be), the second one is Café Schwarzenberg and the third one is the secret behind the title.

Haas und Haas is situated near the cathedral in Vienna and is both a shop for different specialities (tea, chocolate…) and a place where one can sit and have a morning tea, a high tea, an evening tea under the shadows of ivies.
I selected a Milky Oolong from their long list of teas and they did it right and on spot.
However a green tea (I don’t remember which one) was a bit too bitter, probably from a little too long in the water or from a little too much leaves (as I didn’t see the leaves, I can’t say).
From what the people around me had, I think the high tea thing was rather good.

Café Schwarzenberg is one of these classical, typical Vienna coffee houses with everything being where and how it should be.
The tea selection was not big but contained a little bit of everything and a mention that it was up to their customers to make the tea the way they wanted.
And then I got this…

What a shock.
Even if I couldn’t check the temperature (let’s be snobby for a couple of seconds), I got the feeling that everything was perfectly made and the cups of tea were perfect.

Now I am sure you are wondering what I found out and you will probably have guessed it has something to do with the title.
Vienna is full of coffee houses and I went to several ones, getting loose leaf tea in a paper filter (usually a Darjeeling) but it was always bitter and you know why?
Because it was fully loaded. I took a look at one of these filters and they were too heavy with between 4 and 5 g of tea for a medium teapot.
No wonder that it was too strong and that I couldn’t anything about it.

This is something that got me puzzled for some time now: why do people always try to put too much tea? Do they believe that they give us enough tea for our money? Do they believe that the stronger the better (like most people prefer a good cup of coffee)?