This post is part of the series about communist Bulgaria between 1979 and 1989. The first part covered a cat story.
I have two first cousins who are older than me and Hungarian. My uncle moved there in the 50s, and Hungary was not as isolated as Bulgaria.
One day, maybe around 1984 or 1985, they came to visit and we chatted, which wasn’t too easy because of mild the language barrier. The conversation was about ice cream. My cousin tried to convince me, that there are more than 50 types of ice cream in Hungary. I insisted that there were only three. By the end of the conversation, I was sure my cousin is exaggerating. 5-6 okay, but 50? No way.
In communist Bulgaria, almost all businesses were run by the government. Grocery stores didn’t sell ice cream. They didn’t have freezers at all, only coolers. So ice cream could only be purchased from private stands, where you paid for a waffle cone with a ball of ice cream on top.
Stara Zagora, a city of over 100k inhabitants at the time, had one stand I knew about that worked about half of the summer. It had one or two types of ice cream, usually one. The possible choices were white, brown, or yellow. Most of the time we would walk past the stand and it would be covered with cloth, not working.
So, what were the three?
White was vanilla. Yellow was supposed to be lemon, and brown was supposed to be chocolate. However, the country as a whole had issues with flavoring. It was very difficult to buy cocoa that tasted like cocoa, for instance. Our only source of good tasting cocoa was my Hungarian uncle. He would bring one or two packs of Nestlé when he visited, and that was it for the year. I’m sure the person who somehow assembled the ice cream at home also didn’t have a source of cocoa or lemon that tasted accordingly. Lemons and other citrus fruits were available for several days per year, in the winter.
As a result, the three types of ice cream were different in color but not that different in taste, at least according to my fading memories. I think they were all mostly vanilla. The yellow and brown were just a bit worse.
My imagination at that time couldn’t imagine another taste of ice cream, only another color. How could there be 50 types of ice cream if there were only six or seven colors? I wasn’t able to imagine more colors either.
I don’t remember when I first saw modern ice cream; it must have been years after the fall of communism. Communism withdrew slowly, and the riches of consumerist society didn’t become widely available until 1997. But at some point, I saw a Delta fridge, perhaps around 1992-3.
Oh. That’s how you get 50 types of ice cream. My cousin didn’t lie to me.
Veselin.blog 
I remember the ice cream in Armenia in the 90s. It was from a soft serve machine. Most of them looked pretty old and dirty. Before I went to Armenia, I worked at an ice cream shop and had to dismantle those soft serve machines myself. I was pretty sure they were never cleaned properly in Armenia. They only had ice cream that was kind of pinkish brown and indistinct in flavor. If you wanted good ice cream, there was a place that sold very expensive bars that no one could afford.
This was a very interesting post. Thanks for the story!
LikeLiked by 2 people
We also had these machines in the 90s. A friend of mine worked by the sea during summer breaks and warned me to never eat that because they’re dirty.
I didn’t include them because I don’t think we had those in the 80s, and even if we did, they produced the white ice cream.
LikeLiked by 2 people
Interestingly enough, I don’t remember ever seeing hard “scooped” ice cream in Armenia, back in the mid 90s. They just had the dirty ice cream machines and the packaged ice cream bars from an outfit called Ingmann. I think by the time I left in 1997, they were just starting to get luxuries like hard ice cream with actual flavors. For a good portion of my time in Armenia, we only had powdered milk, because there was no power for refrigeration most of the time. 🤢 They were just getting UHT milk by the time I was leaving.
I find stories about what it was like in communist countries fascinating. When I was growing up, I figured I would never see behind the Iron Curtain or meet people from there. And now, what was behind the Iron Curtain has really changed. Even Bulgaria was very different when I visited last year as opposed to when I went in 1996.
LikeLiked by 2 people
Power might’ve been one of the problems for true ice cream. 2/4 was common, which probably made refrigeration difficult (2 hours on, 4 hours off). However, the power shortages were seasonal. I remember summers with primarily water shortages, not power. Gosh, I need to write a separate post about what we did when it was dark and we had no water.
We had milk, though. Non-pasteurized, in soft plastic bags.
LikeLiked by 2 people
Yeah, in Armenia, we had an energy crisis because of power blockades with Azerbaijan and Turkey. My first year there, we had power for about two hours a day. Some people would steal it from the metro station or hospitals. They had “left lines”, which were illegal. Most of the Armenian men I knew were amateur electricians!
My second year, they reconnected to the Metzamor power station, so we had power all the time. It was life changing! But having grown up in the 80s, we all remembered the Chernobyl accident and kept it in mind. They gave us iodine pills to carry with us in case of a nuclear accident. It was meant to protect our thyroid glands. I figure that would be the least of our problems if there was a nuclear accident!
LikeLiked by 2 people
I’m not sure I would survive without ice cream. I’m very spoiled.
LikeLiked by 1 person
Lol, we didn’t know it’s important. We also didn’t have good chocolate at the time
LikeLiked by 1 person
Interesting story! It makes me appreciate the ice cream varieties we have even more.
LikeLiked by 1 person
Have you read “Good Omens” by Neil Gaiman and Terry Pratchett? There’s a passage in it where a group of English children try to come up with the 50 ice cream flavours they’ve heard they have in America. We had vanilla, chocolate and strawberry!
LikeLiked by 1 person
My brother says we’ve also had a pink ice cream but I somehow grew up without seeing it. We had yellow though, although now that I think about it, I’m unsure if the yellow was lemon or something else 🙂
I read Good Omens too long ago to remember anything, perhaps around 99. I was a big fan of Terry Pratchett at the time.
LikeLike
I can relate a little bit. We may not be under communism, but small, remote town, and our part of the world didn’t exist within the country. Ice cream was a luxury and we knew 3 colors, white, brown and pink.
LikeLiked by 1 person