I grew up in post Second World War England where food rationing was in force until 1953. Ice cream was not generally on sale but it was sold freely in public places. My father would often take the family to a park in London so we could enjoy the delights of as many ice creams as we could eat. Unfortunately, I did not like it so it was not a treat for me and I had a problem with eating one, if any at all.

In 1958 a new kind of whipped ice cream was introduced and within months of each other, in 1959, Mr Whippy and Mr Softie ice cream vans were introduced onto the streets of England. I am afraid that I disliked those even more than their predecessors.
On my first visit to Hungary, in 1970, my husband and I visited Esztergom. The main attraction there is the cathedral and at that time many of the crown jewels were housed there. After we had toured the cathedral and walked in the grounds we were beginning to feel quite tired so we sat and rested for a while.
It was such a hot day that I would have welcomed anything that was cold, even the dreaded ice cream and we hadn’t been there long when to our delight a vendor arrived selling ice cream from a box fitted to a bicycle. I chose a cornet with a scoop of chocolate ice cream. I carefully licked the side and to my utter amazement it was the most wonderful ice cream I had ever tasted – an icy delight that tasted of real chocolate, not at all like the creamy, sickly concoctions they sold in England. I was completely hooked and I wherever I went throughout my stay I asked for chocolate ice cream – at that time I never did try any other flavour.
I told my sons about the fantastic ice cream I had eaten in Hungary and when we took them in 1990 they were looking forward to finding out if it was really as good as I had said it was.
Of course, the ice cream seller on the bicycle had gone but in its place was something equally as delightful – the fagylalt (ice cream) shop (fagyi for short) where you could buy a whole range of delicious flavours of ice cream. You can choose as many scoops (gomboc) as you can fit into a cone, three fits just perfectly, in a delightful combination of flavours.
My family soon discovered the delights of Hungarian ice cream and confirmed they had never had any so good.
It is strange how young people view traditional things, though. Recently, we asked a young niece if she would like to come with us to buy a fagyi and she declined the offer. The next day we saw her eating an ice cream and we said that we thought she didn’t like fagyi. She said, no, she did not like fagyi but she liked ice cream – ice cream we discovered was a pre-packed ice cream that she had purchased from the supermarket.
Over the last 14 years the shops have become more modern and the presentation of the ice cream has become more sophisticated but the fagyi is still as delicious today as it was back in 1970 and there is nothing better than to eat three gomboc of fagyi on a hot summers day.