If you have a strong sweet tooth and ice cream is your particular favourite, buckle up: Poland will seem like paradise. It’s hard to walk more than half a block without seeing a sign – or better yet, a large fibreglass likeness – promoting soft serve ice cream cones or flavoured ice creams. You can tell a lot about a country by what its citizens are willing to wait in line for, and Poles are ice cream fanatics. Soft serve machines can be found everywhere from dedicated stands to a restaurant’s patio with a lone attendant so passersby can grab a quick cone. The art of creating a perfectly stacked twist is an impressive one, and it has been mastered in Poland.

If you see a sign for lody (the ubiquitous Polish word for ice cream) you’re in luck, but you’ve also got some serious decisions ahead of you. Do you choose lody amerykańskie, which is the tall, skinny and icy version (and also not like any American soft serve we’ve ever had)? Or the lody włoskie, which is a creamier and squatter version? Not to mention they all come with various flavour and coating options, making the selection a veritable mathematical nightmare. And then there are the ice cream stands selling delicious flavoured ices by the scoop. Pay for the number of scoops you want and then run wild. Ices usually run for 2zł a scoop or 5 or 6zł per cone, depending on the size.