Hej, IKEAland!

I was so excited to spread the word on Kayak.com that I completely forgot to write in my last post that I made it to New Haven. It took a plane, a train, and the New York subway to get me here, but I managed to do so without incident (unless you count falling asleep on the train and unconsciously spilling coffee on myself an incident) and even to save a little money for the extra effort. Anyhow, I've been here for almost exactly a week and it's been pretty wonderful. New Haven is an interesting little city. It has a very condensed, busy downtown area that surrounds the university, so there's all this gorgeous centuries-old Gothic-inspired architecture right next to tall boxy (check out my architectural lingo) apartment buildings and retail space. It's definitely not the sleepy little town that I expected...thank you, Gilmore Girls...but a little farther on the city spreads out and the neighborhoods become quainter, while still somewhat trendy. Brian's newest apartment is in one of these neighborhoods, down the street from the House on Haunted Hill.

For the most part, I've just been hanging out around the apartment with the boy. Occasionally, when he works, I will venture downtown in search of a new pair of pants (a long and disappointing quest, thus far), but mostly I've kept myself busy by running errands and helping him move in. The other day, for example, I spent 3 hours gleefully building his new furniture and arranging his bedroom to my liking. Not many people know this, but I really enjoy building things that come with easy-to-read instructions. In this case, the instructions were especially accessible because they were from IKEA, a company so very cosmopolitan that it can only communicate through illustrations. I'm still a little perplexed by the sometimes-grinning-sometimes-ambivalent hazard man, but, overall, I am a fan of the wordless format.

Anyway, IKEA (Brian calls it IKEAland) is such a wonderful and magical (and SWEDISH) place that I figure it deserves a paragraph of its very own. I realize that there's probably not much that I can tell you about IKEA that you don't already know--even the IKEA salespeople expect a certain level of familiarity with the store and will balk at/use condescending traffic metaphors on you if you don't meet it--but, in the hopes of sparing even one person the confusion and humiliation of IKEA ignorance, I will offer up what little I can.

At its most basic level, IKEA is a Swedish-based company that sells cheap, build-it-yourself furniture and housewares. If you choose to buy online, it will seem like any other boring old company, but if you are lucky enough to have an IKEA store in your area, you are in for the most thrilling and fulfilling shopping immersion experience of your life. When you enter, you have the choice to go right into the warehouse on the first level, to take an escalator to the second-level showroom, or to deposit your children at Småland, the store's free play area/childcare service and perhaps most [stereo]typically Swedish feature (unsurprisingly, IKEA has been named to Working Mothers Magazine's "100 Best Companies for Working Mothers" list 2 years in a row). Unless you've already done all of your browsing at the IKEA website and totally want to pass up the best time ever by going directly to the warehouse, you will go upstairs to the showroom. As soon as you get off the escalator, a friendly red arrow starts you on your IKEAland adventure. The showroom, as it was explained to me, works "like a one-way road." That is, if you get on it and listen to red arrows ( which are only slightly more ambiguous than footprint decals, Smug IKEA Guy), you will see everything. There really is no other way to do it; even if you wanted to skip ahead to, say, Mattress City, a number of strategically-placed kitchen and office displays stand in your way. It is better just to relax and enjoy your stroll past Bathroom Junction, Living Roomopolis, and Beddingville. As you go, you get to try out everything and note with an IKEA golf pencil the aisle and bin numbers of what you like so that you can find it in the warehouse. The salespeople don't assail you with helpfulness unless you ask for it, and the whole experience is refreshingly independent.

At the very end of IKEA Rd. you again have a choice: down the stairs to the warehouse, or straight ahead to the restaurant. If you're like me, you will be tempted to go straight to the restaurant, where they serve Swedish, and some non-Swedish, food at really low prices. Unfortunately, Brian and I were working on a deadline, so we had to forgo the food in favor of more practical pursuits, but we did, somewhat embarrassingly, return after loading up the Budget Truck to enjoy some $5 Swedish meatballs (him) and $1 cinnamon rolls (me).

First, however, we took care of business in the warehouse. After confusedly milling our way through the still-magical, but bewildering, world of poorly-organized home decor displays that greeted us at the bottom of the stairs, we managed to come out, blinking, into the warehouse lights. Even there the shopping experience was surprisingly self-sufficient. We just got a flat cart and loaded it up ourselves with the things we had picked out upstairs. The aisles were well-marked and easy to navigate, and we were both rather amused by the warehouse's Big Ass Fans. After everything was loaded up, we even got to check ourselves out.

In sum, IKEA is one of the best shopping experiences for misanthropic customers. It's also environmentally and socially friendly (or so Wikipedia tells me), cheap, and has everything you might possibly need to live. In fact, a guy named Mark Malkoff, mostly famous for visiting every Manhattan Starbucks in one day and posting a video of it, did live there for a week and made a video of that, too. He's not as funny as he could be, but his search for a Swede is sort of cute, so here it is: