The ice cream truck used to come into the street with a jingle, the children surrounded it as soon as it had come to a stop. Even if father mumbled something about salmonella, he handed you 60 pfennigs, that was enough for your favorite ice cream, two scoops in a waffle cone, raspberry, lemon. After that, the children squatted on the orchard and let each other taste it. In terms of hygiene, it was questionable, but a great pleasure on hot summer days.
As dissatisfied as many Germans appear this summer, one thing they won’t let go of: the ice cream, from the simple chocolate ball to Spiderman Cremissimo, delicate bourbon vanilla vegan, tahini halva and white sausage ice cream – that they like in the hip ice cream parlour times 2.50 euros a ball cost. But that doesn’t bother a great mind, Karlsson would say from the roof, and apart from such outliers, the ice cream in this country is cheaper than anywhere else in Europe: 1.40 euros per liter, according to the statistics office Eurostat, in gelato country Italy they average 2.10 euros.
No wonder, then, that the Germans also became European champions in ice cream production in 2021. 614 million liters of ice cream were produced here, far more than in France (459 million) and Italy (381 million). So things aren’t getting worse. And it stays with what a culinary encyclopedia stated as early as 1894: “The tickling pain that the cold causes on the palate is paired with such exuberant lust that one can only think of the ancient world with a feeling of deepest pity, which this Enjoyment has had to go without.” The eternal black bile in the country should just try it.
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