I love ice cream. I love it so much that I’m quite confident in saying that, over the course of my life, the days in which I’ve eaten ice cream outnumber the days in which I haven’t, and yes, that’s including years 0-2 (ish), when you don’t eat any ice cream at all. It’s one of my more masculine qualities, for sure.

But I have a problem – a desire to try all the ice cream flavors I encounter, no matter how unique, or how much I don’t know what they are. And in Deutschland, there are a lot of different flavors, which leads to encounters at the ice cream shop like this one:

Friend: “What did you get?”

Me: “Blanco Nero.”

Friend: “Ooh, what’s that??”

Me: “I don’t know.”

(Friend stares at me)

(Pause)

Friend: “Then why…um…erm, is it good?”

Me: (inevitable) “No, I should have just gotten Mint.”

The thing is, I know ahead of time that this will be the result. Mint has always been my favorite. But without fail, if there is something I haven’t tried before, no matter how many times I practice, “Ein Kugel mint im Waffel bitte,” it always comes out as “I’ll have that (point to something that’s probably translated incorrectly, because Rumba is an automatic vacuum and not an ice cream flavor, right?)”.

To date, here are my ice cream misadventures:

1. Muffin. How could this go wrong? Everyone likes muffins. Except not everyone likes strange, yellow, fruit-y muffins that can’t decide if they are ice cream or gelato and totally looked like it had a vanilla base under the shop lighting. Should have gotten Mint.
2. Blanco Nero. Vanilla, with chocolate. Pretty hard to mess this one up, and pretty hard to make it great. Could’ve had Mint.
3. Cookies. I probably would have avoided this mistake if only I’d had a previous experience with a flavor that takes the name of another dessert food. Oh, wait… Luckily, I mixed this one with Straciatella, the rare “funny-name-great-taste” combination, so it wasn’t all bad. But whoever made this flavor has clearly never had a cookie. Should have gotten Straciatella with Mint.
4. White Nougat with Hazelnut. I was tricked! This is just hazelnut without the coloring! If I knew I was repeating a flavor, I’d have gotten Mint!
5. Malaga. Vanilla ice cream with raisins? Seriously, raisins?? Should. Have. Gotten. Mint.

Next time, I’m just getting Mint. Unless there’s something new…

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