Viva la Sweden

When I think about Sweden, the two main things that come to mind are meatballs and blond bikini teams. But after a minute or two, I also think about their excellence in automotive engineering. You have Volvo, some of the safest, yet stylish autos on the road. There's also Saab, which are, "Born from jets," referring to the fact that their engineers used to build jets. Is it just me, or has Sweden never really been known for their air force? Is there a reason they don't make jets anymore? I'm just asking...

With all of this talk about Sweden, you probably think that we have a tripped planned to Europe. Not so. Instead, we decided to visit a little piece of Sweden right here in southeast Michigan. Ikea.

Ikea in Swedish means inexpensive furniture that you put together yourself. It probably doesn't translate exactly, but it's got to be close. Mom and dad were in need of some space-saving furniture for the living room and thought this would be a good place to brainstorm...and get me out of the house.

As you can see, I was raring to go on this adventure.

If you have ever been to Ikea, then you know it is a place like no other department or retail store. It's unique. I don't know if Ikea operates like every other business in Sweden, because they take care of your every need. Dad said he had a Swedish exchange student named Johan in his class during high school and the only thing he learned about Sweden was how to curse in the Nordic tongue. Good job dad.

When you first get to Ikea, even the parking lot is unique. There's "Family Friendly" parking. I couldn't tell if the spaces were any bigger, but hey, at least it was close to the building.

Here's mom loading me up in the Baby Bjorne. I wonder if that's Swedish too...

As we entered the building you had an option to dump your kids off at a little play area so a high school kid making minimum wage could chase them around. No thanks. Instead we went up an escalator to begin the shopping journey with neatly marked paths. I'm not kidding, they've got huge arrows on the ground to tell you which direction you "should" go. There were a ton of Ikea employees wondering around with bright yellow shirts waiting to pounce if anyone got off track. We decided to play it safe and take the recommended path.

There were a lot of neat things there and very well priced. One would think that maybe the quality would be lacking since the price was so low, but they've been in business for a long time. Maybe the sweat shops are just more prevalent in Sweden than we think...I dunno.

Mom and I checking out some seating options.

After a good walk through, mom and dad had some ideas and were ready to roll. I left very impressed. By the way, they do sell Swedish meatballs there....seriously.

We stopped to pick up lunch on the way home and as you can tell, I did not care what was on the menu.

* This week mom goes back to work and I start daycare....it could be interesting.