One thing I’ve noticed while living and traveling in Germany is that if you stop in any smallest café place they’ll offer you four types of tea: black, green, fruity and peppermint. It’s pretty obvious that peppermint is a popular hot drink here.

Once shopping in IKEA during my lunch break I went to grab a quick meal in a café there. In a tea section next to the cashier’s one could find all types of tea, yet the peppermint boxes were already running out. I was lucky to get one of the last tea bags of this herbal drink. Another time I was attending a career fair for young people and students. It was a full-day event with canteen facilities and all that. So whenever I’m eating out in these kind of places where I cannot get the brewed tea, I prefer mint or peppermint. That time I wasn’t so lucky because the boxes of peppermint tea were empty. Coincidence? Last November I was traveling to Hamburg with a friend of mine. It was a long road hopping from one regional train to another, so we used the transfer time to get warm and grab a cup of tea. In all the places we stopped, we got some peppermint.

To wrap up, I couldn’t really find a reason why Germans like peppermint tea so much. But I came across one study saying that this herbal tea is very popular particularly in West Germany. Interesting, isn’t it? It’s easy to understand why. Peppermint as a herb offers a lot of health benefits, be it fighting acute stomach problems, relieving pain or easing a headache. Once considered as a “folk medicine”, now peppermint tea is a popular part of the German menus.