Answer:
Well, as far as I can tell, many English people like tea, and it is also somewhat of a tradition. The “unlike the rest of Europe,” however, is just wrong.
I personally got into tea - good black tea - as a student in Bremen. Now, granted, I had some experience with some cheap-ish one back in Bulgaria (I never got to drink coffee, so I took a substitute), but Germany was where I started branching out into teas. It may seem atypical for the German stereotype, but in Bremen and Hamburg there are some great specialized tea shops. I think this is likely due to their Hanseatic heritage - as long-established trading hubs, they would be exposed to exotic goods from around the world, so something like tea or coffee would quickly find popularity as a sign of worldliness and class - remember, for most of their history the Hanseatic states were essentially run by merchants. I did not really use the opportunity, but I would expect that for much the same reason, tea would be quite popular in the Netherlands as well. Further east, there is Russia, which has its own rich tea culture. Have you heard of the samovar? When you have a special device for boiling tea and the word for it spreads to other languages, you know tea is “serious business.”
Explanation:
