IKEA -Jag er inte göra intryck på. (warning -- long rant)

Last weekend, the family tumbled into the mini-wagon, and headed East. We were on our way to my brother’s house, sans directions, phone number, and sanity. The first two make perfect sense – but the last one?

We did IKEA.

Perhaps better said, it did us.

My brother and his family live a hot 30 minute drive from the newest North American IKEA in Stoughton. They are literally a stone’s throw from it, and when we planned our visit, they said, “Go, do some shopping. We’ll watch the kids.” So we went.

And the best thing about IKEA? The meatballs with lingonberry jelly. No, seriously. That was the best, most unique thing about the place.

For those of you who haven’t yet made the pilgrimage, lemme ‘splain. The approach to the store is oddly reminiscent of driving to Logan Airport 20 years ago. Think huge overhead signs, designated lanes, and stupid people. We saw one woman attempt to make a right-hand turn, but instead of making it at the beginning of the intersection, she decided about 2/3 of the way through that she wanted to make the turn. As one would expect, she didn’t end up where she wanted to go, but rather driving on the wrong side of the road. I’ll cut her some slack if she can prove she learned to drive in a Commonwealth (or former Commonwealth) nation.

So we get there in one piece, and the place is ginormous. Lots of blond people bundled up in blue and yellow directing traffic. How hard can it be, people? Ask the lady back at the intersection, I guess.

We were directed into a parking lot to the side of the main lot, which filled with about thirty cars almost immediately. Then they closed it off again (?!?!?!?!?) We made it into the garage with the rest of the parking lot gang – families with small children, the geriatric crowd and the tourists (that’s us!) I likened it to visiting a Las Vegas casino on a Friday night.

Inside, I tried to convince HN to attend the “Shopping Orientation”, but he absolutely refused. Bad enough we had to carry around a HUGE yellow shopping bag (mistake – we didn’t need to carry anything until later, and then we needed a cart).

So up the escalator to browse through the artificial home layouts. A little bit surreal (kids were actually napping on the beds in that department). And no matter what the signs say, this isn’t a place to bring children. At least not ours. SiSi would be overstimulated in about 10 minutes, and Nieve would have fallen asleep before we got out of the Orientation.

Then down to the Marketplace, where we found dishes (good solid plain – into the cart), utensils (a little funky, very European – didn’t see anything we loved), and pots (undeniably cheap and cheap – and the only one that wasn’t, wasn’t in stock).

We made our way to bedding and found the perfect duvet cover. Well, not quite perfect. The perfect color, the perfect style, but NOT available in King size. And as we should have guessed from the obvious warehouse styling of the store, what is on the shelf is what they have. UGH! The duvet cover search continues…

So on to table linens (actually back to table linens, which puts you going in the wrong direction, which actually makes it easier to get through the throngs of stupid people with carts, starring into space, feeling overwhelmed) Display model only of the linens I liked. Okay, now I’m getting grumpy, and just a touch bitter (still am, especially about the duvet cover).

It’s time to leave. But you can’t leave without traversing miles of merchandise. You can take the short cuts, but they don’t shortcut you much. Hey, they need you to be exposed to miles and miles of cheap merchandise. If you shortcut the process, it’s just no fun for them. How are they going to pay the dude who runs the Shopping Orientations?

Finally, we see the exit. But it’s not really the exit. It’s just the exit from the Marketplaec. You still have four miles of warehouse to get through. Thankfully, they have a single aisle up the middle that lets you roll right past all the boxes of furniture just waiting to be assembled. On to the self-checkout, and then the loading zone. Phew!

There were some good things, like the shopping cart that has the magical ability to keep from rolling down the ramp escalator. And the meatballs with jelly (sounds gross, but yummy). And the opportunity to spend three hours with HN (yes, it really took that long).

So the haul looks something like this:

• One set of plain white dishes (6 bowls, 6 dinner plates, 6 lunch plates)
• Six white wine glasses
• Six dessert wine glasses
• One wicker basket
• One package of moose pasta (for my MIL who loves mooses)
• One napkin holder (which wasn’t really a napkin holder, but luckily HN is clever and made it work)

And left behind? About $60, and my super-cool Lands End hat. Crap!