The OC Bucket List: That Custard Place

Since my first semester at Oberlin, I’ve kept a long bucket list of all the things I want to do before I graduate. As the years have passed, I’ve gone back and written about the things I’ve done. It’s amazing to watch it get filled in. My little journal entries next to the various numbers read like time capsules of my time here.

Throughout this semester, I’ll be sharing some entries from the bucket list! Most will be stories of items I’ve already completed, but a few will chronicle my attempts to cross more things off my list. I’m already emotional about leaving Oberlin, so these posts will be a love letter to campus – all the experiences I’ve had, places I’ve visited, people I’ve met. Welcome to the first post about my OC Bucket List!

This was the first-ever entry on the list, in October of my first year:

Go to the custard place that everyone talks about.

All the seniors I knew posted pictures of their friends outside at some custard stand, looking effortlessly cool (as seniors do) licking colorful cones and laughing. At this point, I literally never left campus, so it seemed like some mystical place where I’d go once I was really settled in. After asking around, I learned that the stand where all those great profile pictures had been taken was called Krieg’s. Its full name is inexplicably Krieg’s It’z the Berries Frozen Custard (with a ‘z’). It’s a 10-minute drive from campus on the outskirts of the nearby town of Amherst. For a first-year without a car or bike, that felt pretty far. So Krieg’s stayed in the back of my mind, a dreamy destination. On warm evenings, my friends and I would moan and wish that we could go, but we satisfied ourselves with eating soft-serve cones from Stevie on the benches outside Kahn. One person went with an upperclassman friend and I remember asking them what it was like, eyes shining. For me, Krieg’s came to represent not being a newbie anymore.

In the beginning of sophomore year, I finally made it. A bunch of us piled into an older student’s green van – one person in the trunk – and drove over. I got a yummy chocolate-vanilla swirl and ate it standing in the small patch of light outside the stand with my friends. It was cheap and fun and, weirdly, I didn’t get any photos. I’ve only been a handful of times since, but it feels special to me. It’s a place that will always be a quintessential memory of my time at Oberlin. I think senior year might be the year I finally have a Krieg’s profile picture too – I have to inspire some first-years to go check it out!!

See you soon! Let me know if you have any suggestions of things to add to the list.

P.S. Another thing I’ll be doing on the Blogs this semester: my song of the week! This week: Wonderland by CHVRCHES. Check it out!