see and understand through traveling

An extremely hot sun as summer in Ankara, Turkey, makes me want to chew some ice cubes. However, I get a burning tea as a welcome drink when I look for lunch at the cafe. I remember an occasion few hours ago, when I settle down at Kizilay park. The sellers look strenuous to tender Turkish tea to everyone at park, including me. They shout out cay, means Turkish tea. Cay is a form of black tea, which more popular than Turkish coffee. Turks create their own way of making and drinking cay, which became as an important part of Turkish culture. Offering cay is considered as a sign of friendship and hospitality, anywhere and before or after any meal. Following collapse of the Ottoman Empire, Turks seem hard to get coffee due to export constraints and an increase of price. Ataturk, the first president of Turkey, urges his people to consume cay as an alternate of coffee that produce on the eastern Black Sea coast. Afterward, cay is popular among Turks. For best results of cay, we need two stacked kettles. Pouring water into the larger kettle to be boil and putting a teaspoon of tea per person into the smaller kettle on top. Pour some boiling water from the larger kettle into the smaller kettle, then the kettle on top will boils with the steam underneath for 10-15 minutes. Finally, it’s ready to pouring a tea into small tea glasses, such as a little tulip shaped glasses due to cay is full flavored and too strong to be served in large glass. You can have cay either weak or strong, depending on your taste. It served by pouring some very strong tea from smaller kettle then add water from larger kettle into the tulip shaped glass. Remember, you have to hold the glass by rim to save your fingertips from burning, because it served boiling hot.