I. K. E. A.

I am well aware of the fact that the US also has the Swedish furniture chain. And yes, they are pretty big. So think of an Ikea that you have visited in the United States.. and yeah.. TRIPLE it in size, add a giant playplace for kids, and top it off with a huge cafeteria (because obvioulsy you're going to get hungry half-way through your spending extravaganza). That is what the wonderland that is IKEA is like here in Europe. Yesterday, (Saturday), Lisa, Kai, Johanna, little Emilian and I, all piled into the G-Wagon and headed to Ikea to pick up some things to finally finish my room--since the floor is FINALLY done. Once there we started the long journey throughout the store (if you can even call something this large a "store"). Of course, being good Germans, we had already gone on-line, picked out everything we wanted, measured the room, drew up a blueprint, drew out a plan of where it all should go in the room, and made it all to scale. No joke. Even with all this pre-planning and knowing exactly what we were looking for, it still turned into a day event. We found everything we needed, and even a few that we didn't ;) and we're finally ready to call it a day. 5 hours, and 854.31 Euro later, we were able to head home. Yeah, I said EIGHT HUNDRED & FIFTY FOUR EURO (that's well over 1,000 US$) Holy Crap. I have NO idea how we managed to spend that much, I mean, it's not like the items we chose were super expensive individually. Basically, Ikea is a black hole, where once you find yourself inside, everyone blacks-out and then hours later wakes up with a room full of un-assembled furniture and a recipt for 854 Euro. WTF.