Now it’s important to understand that Havana is a time-capsule. 60 years of American embargos have left the country in 1959. Let the Buicks still roaming Havana and the country’s love affair with baseball bare witness to this. Leaving Cuba a tropical communist paradise and a shrine to what happens when you opt for Soviet rubles over American dollars. Coppelia is a shining example of this.
Moreover Cuba still features all the communists cliché that terrified the west but have become historical comedic fodder since: the demagogues, the atheism, the architecture, and the horrendous product shortages…..Coppelia finds a way to incorporate them all into an ice cream parlor and a cultural experience that would have required native level Russian, an obsessive drive to crush capitalism, or a heavy Red Army presence for the better part of the 20th century. And few places in Havana provide a more entertaining hurricane shelter during a summer squall. Lucky for us we had dark skies and sweet teeth.
It was our last day in Cuba and we decided to spend it wandering around one of the America’s most vibrant cities. After seeing the fort and the charm of this dilapidated but colorful streets, we found ourselves in the city center staring a line of people that wrapped around the block. Now I don’t often fall for this trap but having already spent 10 days in Cuba you learn that a long line almost always leads to something interesting. Like the Disneyland-like que flowing from Havana’s, honest to god, “Soap and Water Store.” Who wants to spend half a day lamenting government controlled rationing and waiting for the chance to hydrate at home and have clean things? Me, I do, I do. Enticed by possibilities, we entered this column of duped masses. The line moved glacially slow and it took well over 30 minutes to see what we were waiting for, a multi-leveled, socialist gazebo in the middle of a park. A remnant of Candy Land’s communist era. Now communist architecture has this “what were they thinking?” quality and Coppelia’s creators studied at the finest state run, underfunded engineering schools the Soviet Union could provide. A pitched blue roof with an exposed interior decorated with colored windows in the style of the 1960s lowest achieving middle school. All the while maintaining that bare concrete aesthetic that sucks the joy of life from anyone who makes eye contact. All of this surrounded by tropical plants making it feel like Jurassic Park had given modernism a chance before abandoning it and surrendering it to the raptors.
On top of that was its distinction as a cathedral to ice cream. No secret that Marx wasn’t keen on religion and this presented a challenge for communist nations. How you do ween a once devoutly Catholic country off Christ? In the bloc it was violent purges, but in Cuba. Bribe them with ice cream like it’s an island home to 11 million 4-year-olds. And then provide a place to worship the ice cream, making sure it pops a little bit. This is a tropical paradise and the splendor baroque churches make us look bad. “Then how do we show God is dead?” Boldly and brightly painted rebar concrete. “Yeah, that’ll show Jesus he doesn’t exist.”
We were still way back in line as time began to pass more greatly. Our last day in Havana was going to be totally wasted but you’d never know by the saintly patience of everyone in line. At home waits like this trigger stampedes. Here even kids weren’t fidgety. Well done police state, well done. Entertaining the idea of bailing, god intervened, or he would have had he not been killed by the very forces that built Coppelia. The skies began to grow dark and a distant rumble became a deafening crack in no time. As the rain began to fall, no one moved. “I’ve spent 13 hours waiting for soviet style caramel, nothing changes that now.” When the rain got heavier with lightening flashing, I wanted to get out but we fed off determination of the families with small children. Still, no one moved. The threat of electrocution was nothing compared to losing a place in line. So it took to a downpour that would have washed away a village for people to start looking uncomfortable and a deluge that would have needed a covenant with god to stop (And by God I mean Castro.) for the line to finally break up.
But these dairy aficionados refused to surrender their ice cream dreams. Such was their drive for deserts that Completely drenched, we all ran across the now flooded street and under a the entrance of a building huddling around dumpsters like urchins on the streets of Calcutta. Jamie and I simply swept away in this ice cream hysteria joined them, only realizing the extreme measure we were taking for a sweet treat once out the rain. However, we were in too deep. We joined the haggard masses and were gonna with this out. And we weren’t even the most hardcore Coppelia fans. We showed cowardice in leaving the line. There were others who braved nature’s fury and simply stood in line…in defiance of this tropical storm…pompous in the knowledge that they were next to get ice cream.
This squall continued for well over an hour and the by the end half the ice cream refugees had accepted the hard truth of a treatless afternoon. We, however, weren’t one of those. And with half the competition we were gonna get ice cream. Marching triumphantly through ankle deep water in the street, we paraded into Coppelia and were treated to our first taste of a communists confectionery, the flavor list. Of course there were the bland flavors. The flavors the west will take for granted and only appreciate once the proletariat rises will bellies full of vanilla. Let the west grow fat on sorbet. And rebranding a single flavor to give the illusion of options. "Today we have coco, chocolate, and cacao." "Aren't those all chocolate?" "Definitely not." But it was the exotic fruit flavors that were the best. Colored sugar ball devoid of flavor, nutritional value, and natural coloration. “Are guavas electric orange?” Only about three of these were available. Then there were the combo orders that featured so many scoops (bolas) that they had to be for a family, right? Right?
Resigning herself to customer service she asked our order. “1 Bola caramel por favror y 1 Bola vanilla.” Gone was her look of annoyance and replaced with a look of horror mixd with concern. “Una sola?” “Yes.” She came back wit two scoops in a cavernous serving bowl that dwarfed the bolas and an expression like she was looking at dead men walking. You see, we applied our own cultural biases to the scoops. One scoop is normal when you’re not fighting a calcium deficiency with it. Glancing around counter I noticed other orders. One bola was not a typical order. 8 scoops, 11 scoops, 15 scoops, these were typical. Hence meteor crater needed to serve the ice cream. Some people order so many they needed a a second bowl for the spill over. Looking left there was a boy of 16 sitting next to me attacking a topographical map of Peru made of caramel bolas, it then dawned on me. This is the closest Cubans get to calcium after “El Presidente” had his way with Cuban agricultural sector. Who needs need milk when you can have fun weighing the choice between diabetes and hypocalcemia? This also explained our server reaction’s with only one scoop our bones are going to be so brittle. Our shins are going to snap the minute we stand up. “Enjoy the osteoporosis, gringos,” was the subtext of the entire exchange.
But the bolas only help so much. What about the needed calories to survive the inevitable empty shelves? Coppelia had that covered too. On top of the mountain of scoops, one could put as much malt and honey as they wished to build up fat reserves. Eat comrades, you’ll need 2kg of malt to protect our shores from American interests. And people were not shy about the malt and honey, completely inundating their ice cream to the point that intense mining was needed to even reach the ice cream. The bottles were even made to combat portion control as the top of the malt container wasn’t fluted at all, so a cascade of malt landslided the scoops leaving it looking Pompeii. And it’s not like the malt was needed because Copelia ice cream is the worst tasting ice cream in the world: sugar mixed with quicklime and plaster with eye dropper of milk. As hysterical as this was to watch, we were both dumfounded that the Cubans really believed this was healthy. It spoke to the misinformation that rules the island.
But this didn’t stop people from flooding in once the skies cleared. By the time we left there was crowd of people circling like vultures around each counter for a stool, anxiously awaiting an opening. “Be patient they’re slowly working their way through 20 bolas then they’ll leave, with strong bones no less.”
It had been an eye opening experience. We had visited Havana’s true cathedral, not only getting a taste of ice cream but also a taste of a political and social system that dominated the globe for half a century. And mixed like all the malt were my emotions. I lamented a nation with a 5 year-old for a surgeon general. “Ice cream for dinner makes the tummy happy!” But I couldn’t help lament my own childhood. Raised with a culture that doesn’t treat skeletal health with obesity. Maybe my own short stature could have be avoided with more scoops and less salads. Thanks mom.