The border is Europe’s oldest and most contested artifact. Europe has more international borders per square kilometer than any comparable landmass. It has redrawn them repeatedly — through conquest, treaty, collapse, and negotiation — and carries the scar tissue of every revision. To understand European identity is to understand that the border is not a settled fact but a managed argument, and that the management of that argument is itself the achievement.

Tea’s history begins in a haze of legend, the kind where stories feel half-mythical yet somehow fitting for a drink that has accompanied human civilization for millennia. One tale says the Chinese emperor Shen Nong was resting beneath a tree in 2737 BCE when a few leaves drifted into his boiling water, tinting it with a faint aroma. He tasted the infusion, found it refreshing, and unknowingly sparked one of the world’s most enduring cultural traditions.