Ikea: Trip #01

After measuring up my apartment and stuffing myself with salmon and potatoes I headed to Ikea, where it would be necessary to purchase some of their delightful furnishings in order to sit on things other than the floor, put my clothes somewhere other than the floor and lie somewhere other than the floor.

Ikea in America (or at least in Brooklyn) is very much like any other Ikea.

At one point I tried to help a woman trying to choose a sofa bed frame, but was mistaken by other shoppers as a member of staff (probably my fault for wearing a bright orange hoodie) and was asked a bunch of questions by them all. Some of whom then didn't actually believe me when I told them I was just a man trying to buy a bed. Serves me right for trying to be helpful.

There seem to be two main differences between Ikea-America and Ikea-everywhere-else.

1) Everything is measured in inches and fractions of inches. Luckily I had foreseen this occurrence and measured up my apartment in cm and inches. Still confused me though. The imperial system used in the States flummoxes me at every opportunity. I still haven't got to grasps with Fahrenheit, and I'm not entirely sure what my weight is in pounds (not stone though, just pounds), around 150 I think. What the hell is wrong with metric anyway?

2) The food was wrong. Wrong. Wrong. Wrong. One of my great joys of Ikea is the meatballs with boiled potatoes, brown sauce (not HP, but gravy) and loganberry jam (jelly). I tried it here, and oh deary me, it failed on so many levels. The worst contender was the potatoes, Americans don't really do boiled potatoes. They just aren't bad enough for you. So it's served with mashed potatoes. The meatballs were made with just beef, and not beef and pork. The jam was incredibly sweet. For a country that does some amazing food, they really buggered this up. Seriously, how hard can it be?

The real kicker about the whole trip was that after spending 7 (seven!) hours hunting down bits of furniture, they didn't have the mattress I wanted in stock, and I'll have to go back on friday night to get it then. This isn't exactly how I like to spend my friday evenings, but at least it'll be quieter and I can have it delivered on saturday.

All I ended up buying was a bunch of blinds for the windows, some hooks for the doors and a giant oversized clock for the bathroom. Always had a bit of a fetish for very large clocks in very small rooms. Not entirely sure why. Playing with scale I guess.