Westhoff Coffee and Tea

It's that time of year again -- winter. Invariably, this means I'm stuck inside for long periods of time. And invariably, this means that sooner or later I get around to cleaning out my office.

This year in my office cleaning, I found an envelope full of souvenirs I'd collected on a trip through Europe back in 1997. (Yikes what a long time ago!) The envelope contained mostly maps and ticket stubs.

Among these, though, I also came across a tea bag and the top of a coffee creamer cup. Both were "Westhoff" brand. Obviously, I'd saved these because of the name connection, Westhoff being my name and all.

It's not the most common name here in the U.S., so I remember it was a thrill to have discovered my name boldly labeled on products in restaurants and cafes.

On that same trip, we also landed ourselves in a small town called Westhoffen, but that's--I suppose--a blog post for another time.

After going through all the papers I'd saved from that long ago trip, I ended up tossing most in the recycling bin. Did I really need a metro stub from Berlin? Probably not.

But I am going to keep my Westhoff tea bag and coffee creamer.