We Found an Ikea Store

We Found an Ikea Store

The demon child woke me at 8:00 this morning. I could have slept a bit later, but did I did stay in bed until after Ron got up and made coffee. Shortly thereafter, he left for church and I started writing. When he returned, he said that the mass was a High mass in Latin.

As I was writing, I had this memory of the woman that supplies the apartment having an Ikea bag in her hand at one point when she came in. Ron looked in the English version of the phone book, we found a similar store listed with phone number and address, but Ikea only had a phone number. When he called, he was only able to get an incomprehensible message machine. He called the similar store to find out what they carried and asked them the address of Ikea. The similar store carried American furniture. Head for Ikea, fast.

At the end of the Red metro line, where Ikea was supposed to be, there was another mall. This one looked like a poor relative of the mall near us. We walked down the street, but did not see an Ikea, but then I spotted a blue and yellow building and said “I bet that is it.” It was.

Neither of us had been in an Ikea before. The first one in Northern California was opened shortly before we left when we were concerned with getting rid of things, not acquiring more. When we entered, we were prompted by the signs on the floor to start at the first floor, one flight up. We had to travel through various set designs of living rooms, dining rooms, bedrooms, kitchens, and bathrooms to reach the actual sale floor of merchandise and most of it was on the ground floor anyway.

We were able to find nice thick hand towels, two bath towels, two straw entry mats for wet boots, and a large bath rug for six thousand, five hundred forints ($23.10). We were thrilled with our purchases, especially since Myrtis, Randall, and Myrtis’ daughter are coming to spend the night one night next week.

Within the mall, there is a large Match supermarket, a chain that is popular here. We tried buying butter. We had margarine, but Ron wanted real butter. All of the packages had some form of the word margarine on it and we could not find anything that looked like butter packages as we know it. There was a clerk standing there stacking the shelves and I said to her “Margarine?” while I was holding what I thought was margarine. Then I asked said butter with a questioning tone and waving my finger over the products. She obviously did not understand and proved it by shrugging her shoulders. Then we discovered a block next to all of the margarines that did not have a derivative of the word margarine on it. When we got home, we found that we bought lard. Not as good as butter, but really close to margarine.

We bought a pound of kielbasa for $1.00, but when Ron started to get dinner, we remembered we have not been supplied with our can opener yet, so we could not open the can of sauerkraut. Out of desperation, we called Szylvia, our rental agent. She lives on the third floor. She came down with hers and said she would call the office tomorrow and get the rest of our things.

Ron went to take a nap, I was sitting here writing, and the phone rang. I had forgotten to plug the phone back into the outlet in the living room, so I yelled to Ron asking if that was our phone ringing? What a strange sound in your own apartment when you are living abroad. I plugged the phone in and it was our friend Myrtis. They are coming on Tuesday. We are dying for company, so we are hoping we don’t drool when we see them or have any other embarrassing outburst of inappropriate behavior.

Hope you had a great weekend.

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