Leer sits on the River Leda, a tributary of the Ems, about thirty kilometres from the open coast - close enough that large ships still come up the Ems to its docks. The Dutch border is just to the west; the district of Leer butts directly against the province of Groningen. Saint Ludger built the first chapel in East Frisia at the western edge of the old settlement in 791 AD, when the place was still called Hleri. That chapel got into a written record in 850. By the 14th and 15th centuries, Leer was the seat of the Ukena family, one of the most powerful East Frisian chieftain dynasties; the fortress of Leerort, where the Leda enters the Ems, guarded its trade. In 1508 Count Edzard granted Leer the right to host a market, founding the Gallimarkt that still fills the streets each autumn. Town privileges came late - 1823 - but the maritime habit was already centuries old.

Today, walking the harbour at Leer feels disproportionate to a town of fewer than 35,000 people. About 20 percent of the entire German merchant fleet is registered here - cargo ships and tankers and bulk carriers flagged in a town most Germans could not place on a map. The shipping companies have offices in old brick warehouses along the Leda. Two autobahns cross north of the town, the A28 east to Bremen and the A31 south to the Ruhr. The railway runs west to Groningen and east to Bremen. There is a navigation school here, now part of the Hochschule Emden-Leer, training the people who staff those ships. None of this is accidental. Leer's whole geography points seaward, even though you cannot quite see the sea from here. The Ems is the door.

The Bünting company, founded in Leer, owns supermarket chains across Germany - but everyone in the country knows the brand for tea. East Frisia drinks an absurd amount of tea per capita, more than the British, more than almost anywhere on Earth, and the cultural ritual built around it - Kluntje rock sugar, the cream cloud, three cups minimum - has UNESCO Intangible Cultural Heritage status. The Gallimarkt, that 1508 cattle market, has become one of the largest autumn fairs in Northwest Germany. Religion in Leer is famously varied: a Protestant town that hosts the head office of the German Reformed Church, plus Lutherans, Baptists, Mennonites, Methodists, Adventists, even a Mormon community, with a smaller Catholic presence. Famous sons include Focko Ukena the chieftain, the theologian Ubbo Emmius (1547-1625), Ernst Reuter who was raised here before becoming mayor of West Berlin in the airlift years, and - in a sharp swerve into pop culture - H.P. Baxxter, born here in 1964, the shouting frontman of the Eurodance group Scooter. Tea and Scooter, in the same small town. East Frisia contains multitudes.