beulahbondo's Diaryland Diary ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- IKEAnt find a place to pahk! There are an awful lot of small children who will perhaps one day tell a long, detailed story of how their parents took them to the first IKEA in Massachusetts on the day it opened. How, being among the first 100 in line, they received a free BLORT chair (so worth sleeping in the parking lot!). How they ate a delicious open-faced shrimp sandwich and drank lingonberry soda. How Mom bought them a SNERT stuffed bear and a SPLECK basket for it to sleep in. Or maybe all they will remember is the three-hour traffic jam. Actually I don't know anyone who went on opening day. Nancy Drew, her husband, and her father, went on the Third Day. She reports a three-mile backup just to get to the exit, and that they couldn't get near the restaurant or the food market for crowds. My Danish friend and I went on the Fourth Day, yesterday, cleverly (we thought) strategizing a late-afternoon trip. We still sat in traffic for an hour, but once we got onto "IKEA Way" and into the parking area, all these security guards with light sabers waved us into the garage, and from then on it was like a yellow-and-blue version of the Emerald City. We both grew up with IKEA furniture and tealights and textiles, so we were swooning with cultural love, and then with fatigue, as we spent nearly four hours there, including dinner (a delicious gravlax plate). Yet I had to laugh as I paid for my purchases, because after all that, I spent less than $20 and bought two coffee mugs, a pillow, two pillow cases, and two tealight holders. Tokens. In the food market, I got some real essentials, though: these little rusky biscuits I remember having at my grandmother's, and some gooseberry jam, which also reminds me of her house, because she had gooseberries in the yard, and we would eat them with cream and sugar (lots of sugar). My Swedish grandmother fed me so well: she would give me bowls of cream for an afternoon snack, or candied rose petals; a bedtime snack might be garlicky mussels on buttered toast. (New York grandma gave us great snacks too, like seven-layer Sara Lee yellow cake with chocolate frosting, still cold from the freezer. She wasn't much of a cook.) For breakfast we would have Frost-Flingor (Frosted Flakes) or Puffa-Puffa Ris (Puffa-Puffa Rice) on top of this uniquely Swedish soured milk -- kind of like buttermilk, kind of like yogurt, kind of like keffir. I can't wait for Christmas! My Danish friend and I kept yelling "nu ar jul igen!" even though it isn't, quite. But mmm, Swedish Christmas. So many salty foods, washed down with so much beer. 12:55 p.m. - 2005-11-13 ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- |
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