IKEA pt.2

IKEA lays out their product departments in a neatly flowing line. One leads logically into the next, as if you're passing through the rooms of a house. The restaurant, however, is last in line. I suppose this is so that after a vigorous spree, one can sit down and refuel. We, apparently unconventionally, saw to this first. We each had a cold meatball sandwich with butter, lettuce and some kind of chunky red beet mayo (18 SEK apiece, or $2.56. Currently, $1 US=7.02 SEK.) Pretty delicious, really.

We spent our subsequent stroll going against the traffic arrows' advice. We found what we wanted anyhow, though it took dodging some regularly oriented shoppers.

From the KÖK (kitchen) department, we got measuring cups with both metric and US graduations.

From SPARA & FÖRVARA (save and preserve) we got a sack of thirty super-rad bag clips.

From BADRUM (bathroom) we got a squeegee wiper for the shower in the apartment we're subletting. (A note on bathrooms: nearly all of the showers we have encountered are really part of the bathroom, with only a curtain dividing off that section of the room. The floor and walls are fully tiled, and the shower head is a removable hand-held sprayer mounted directly onto the wall. The floor slopes slightly toward a built-in drain. A squeegee is needed to push any errant water back toward the drain.)

At the register we found IKEA's big blue shopping bag for 5 SEK.

(About shopping in Scandinavia: In paying for your groceries, you must either bring your own sack to bag in, or purchase a plastic or paper bag for a small amount at the register. Thus, it's wise to find some sort of sturdy, permanent shopping tote to carry about.)

Before leaving the store, we stopped by the bistro for 1kg of frozen köttbullar (meatballs), a jar of lingonsylt (lingonberry jam) and two wienerkorv (hot dogs!). These we enjoyed on the spot with a score of wienerkorv eatin' shoppers. Wild! So many wienerkorvar!

We caught the right local bus back to to the Värmhem stop in Malmö, and then our connecting regional bus to Lund.

Our stop is about three blocks from our apartment, and there's a grocery (COOP Konsum) on the way. So, it being close to the 20:00 (8:00pm) closing time (oh, and NOTHING'S open on Sundays, here), we stopped in for some foody-shopping. Cereal, milk, paper products, some pepparkakor (like gingersnaps), rice pudding in a tube, and messmör (soft whey butter) at check out were all packed into our giant new IKEA bag, which was then trundled homeward. It's pretty easy to carry, actually!

Just before we got home we met a nice orange kitty who followed us for a bit:

We miss our own orange kitties. Hello from from Sweden, Tot and Zip!!

-J.