This is what King Charles III tastes like.

King Charles III As a tea, it tastes floral, without much bitterness, but with a note of Greek mountain tea, elderberry and ginger and all that on the basis of a mildly fruity, Kenyan Darjeeling, according to Jörg Schröder. He should know, Schröder has been an ardent supporter of the British royal family since early childhood, and he has been running the "British Tearoom Eaton Place" in Ottensen for five years. Schröder lives the British tradition with a casual snootiness and subliminal irony. He and his team created this tea for Charles's coronation on May 6th.

"We wanted to make the Coronation Tea more pleasing, more harmonious, more relaxed than the Jubilee Tea for the Queen's 70th throne jubilee last year," explains Schröder, of course, over a few homemade scones with clotted cream and a finely scented tea from a delicate porcelain cup. Relaxed, more harmonious, committed to tradition and yet modern, this is how Schröder interprets the British king.

"I don't want to see kings in sweatpants and on bikes," he says, referring to the Dutch royal family. For Schröder, the royals mean a certain stability in times that are already turbulent. The traditional calms him down without being backward-looking. "I can unwind there, as I always do after trips to Great Britain, I'm absolutely relaxed there."

This is also the atmosphere that the Ottensen Tearoom exudes: everything is dignified here. Guests are personally and happily greeted by name at the door, after waiting politely at the entrance lined with heavy red ropes on golden waist-high posts. Nobody rushes in here. A reservation is usually necessary anyway. A small Union Jack pennant stands on each table, vases of lavishly filled roses rest on mantels and small tables, electric candles flicker on cantilevered candelabra. And from the walls, Queen Elizabeth II shines in all situations and phases of life.

Charles only watches over the bar stocked with liquor and cupcakes, and in the men's room. That should change soon: Schröder naturally wants to hang up a photo of the coronation, perhaps also of the royal couple's visit to Hamburg on Friday.

As a child, Schröder discovered his love for the British royal family. He no longer knows exactly where this fascination came from. Except that he really wanted to see the Queen when she came to Germany in 1978. At the age of eight, Schröder forced his older brother to take him to Kiel on a moped to be there when the Queen docked with the ship. And indeed he caught a glimpse of her as she walked down the gangway - in a bright green dress, as Schröder recalls. When he was twelve, his parents finally took him to London. “I thought everything was great, the taxis, the buses, the bobbies, Edgar Wallace, the left-hand traffic. It was so exotic.” And this landscape, so picturesque and then again so terribly ugly.

"I like the whimsy about the British, everything is always a bit over the top, it should be symmetrical but not uniform, the furnishings, the way of life is always a little chaotic but harmonious at the same time," he characterizes the people on the island. Uniformity and carelessness are repugnant to Schröder. Style is important to him, the British of course. He has been dressing in British Heritage style for years, and not just in his tearoom: knickers, tweed waistcoat and cap, thin mustache. Schröder drives a Mini, his dog – not a Welsh Corgi like the Queen once did, but a white, fluffy Bichon Frisé – always scuttles alongside him or cuddles on Schröder’s lap.

The man from Hamburg, who worked as a management consultant for a long time before he set himself the task of cultivating the British lifestyle in Hamburg, also loves the "wonderfully useless hobbies of the British, such as collecting things that just stand around and are covered in dust, but that's their justification have". For him also the expression of a certain attitude to life, of humorous serenity. "The British are not prone to drama."

All of this embodied for Schröder, long ridiculed as the eternal crown prince Charles, who was accused of cruelty and cold-heartedness towards the beautiful young Diana, whom many saw as a laughing stock when private messages with tampon fantasies to Camilla became public. “Of course, the members of the royal family are also private individuals. Private conversations that are bugged are nobody's business," he says.

Because Schröder is not interested in gossip anyway, he is fascinated by the "working roles" of the royals and Charles has filled his role magnificently, not only since the death of his mother last year. "I see him as very honest. He downsizes the royal family and yet the glamor is not lost,” says Schröder, who likes to point out that the royals cost British taxpayers a lot, but also generate enormous income through merchandising and tourism, and also launch many charitable projects.

Schröder is convinced that Charles III. will gently renew the royal family together with Camilla, in order to then pass it on to his son William and his wife Kate, who Schröder also appreciates and experienced during her visit to the Elbphilharmonie in 2017. But Charles is his favourite: “I find him very relaxed. He proved that, for example, when he spontaneously became a confident and very funny weather announcer during a visit to the BBC,” he says. Above all, Charles approaches people – maybe on Friday also to Schröder and his husband.

He does not want to reveal details about a possible meeting, about place and time. But Hamburg's Jörg Schröder has long since acquired a certain standing among the British, and not only in the Hanseatic city. His love for the kingdom and his knowledge are undisputed.