Change In Plans

This short post is about buying ice cream from sidewalk vendors in Turkey. As you might expect, with two small children in a hot place, this has been a frequent occurrence.

Who knew that Turkish ice cream vendors are also required to be comedians?

Turkish ice cream is kept very cold, and balls up into a big glob in the freezer bucket. The vendors, who invariably seem to be large, chef-hatted and mustachioed men, poke and prod and stir the ice cream with long, thick-bladed metal spatulas. The spatulas are all metal, with handles about 4 feet long, and small-but-thick crescent shaped blades.

When a child asks for an ice cream, the comedy routine starts. First the vendor scoops out some ice cream with the spatula, sticks a cone onto the bespatulaed wad, and twirls it all around a few times. Just before presenting the ice cream and cone to the child, the vendor deftly pulls off the cone, and the child grabs at air. Then the vendor slyly attaches two cones to the ice cream wad, twirls the spatula around a few times, and the child grabs an empty cone. Finally, the vendor twirls the spatula evasively a few times as the child tries to grab the ice cream and cone.

After a total of 2-3 minutes, the ice cream and cone are finally in the child’s hand.

If the customer is an adult male (me, for example), the routine is the same, except that the customer gets a few pokes in the belly from the metal spatula.

This whole routine is actually funnier than it sounds, and we have seen it repeated several times all over Turkey. Maybe there is a centralized ice cream comedy training center.