It’ s a known fact that Finns are extremely jealous of their Swedish neighbours. Compared to our shy, self-aware and grumpy nature and constant dwelling in misery the Swedes seem to confidently succeed in everything they do, preserving their manners always and holding a perfect smile throughout their lives. Finland was a part of Sweden from the 13th century until 1809 (when we became a part of Russia). We have a Swedish speaking minority of 6% and the majority sees them as snotty, rich elite who only play amongst their own. After all, they represent the Swedish super humans with their perfect tans and sailing pullovers.
Swedes have H&M (I remember the first time visiting one in Stockholm, it was like heaven back in 1994). They actually own half of the clothing retail shop chains in Finland. Swedes had Roxette (my first favourite band ever). They had ABBA. They have Volvo. When our teams play ice-hockey against each other, the swedes always make magical 4 goals during the last 30 seconds and win. Greta Garbo, Ingrid Bergman, Kirsten Dunst, Maggie Gyllenhaal, Uma Thurman all have Swedish roots. The only celebrity we have with Finnish roots is Pamela Andersson. Fuck, they even have stolen our meatballs. They are FINNISH, not Swedish. And then they have Ikea.
Ikea is the Swedish conspiracy to lure people with affordable prices to turn their homes into miniature Swedens. Everything is functional, simple and stylish in a low-key manner. Ikea is also the shop where you are most likely to get into a fight with the person you are going there with. I don’t know if they spray something into the air that turns people crazy. Or maybe it’s just the frustration that us finns as customers develope when encountering the Swedish dream. I’ve experienced and witnessed this Ikea-syndrom several times when visiting the shop. I’ve had crazy fights on home decoration with my ex there, I’ve seen my sister having crazy fights with her ex over stupid furniture. I’ve seen strangers fighting over discount bowls. The place always get’s my blood pressure to the hights. Like yesterday too.
Me and DH had planned to get new curtains to living room. I looked up Ikea’s homepage and they had nice-looking, red panel curtains with a cheap price. So we decided to visit the shop yesterday after I got off from work. Our gps didn’t know Ikea (maybe it was designed by jealous Finns who just wanted to leave it off the map) but luckily we somehow remembered how to drive there. We skipped the furniture exhibit part and headed straight to the shop part. You would think finding a specific product with its name written on a piece of paper would be easy.
Wrong answer! Anno Tupplur just didn’t want to be found. We walked a circle in the textiles section (it’s not that big even) for 15 minutes swearing like sailors. Where the fuck are those curtains? All we could find was normal curtains, not the panel ones. We left the section and finally found one clerk (she was the only one in the 10000 km2 shop I guess) who told us to go back to the section we left. We walked the same circle for about 10 more minutes and I witnessed a crazy fight with a teenage girl and her mother about what color of curtains should the daughter purchase. Then DH came to me with a red roll in his hand. It was the curtains packed in a plastic roll. I went to look the examples they had hanging just to notice that they were too wide and would have required sewing. So no curtains for us. Of course you can’t exit Ikea empty-handed, so we bought a few storage boxes and some towels to the bathroom.
Ikea also earns the place for my top 5 of worst places for an infertile. Yep; a zillion preggo bellies there.
Assembling the Ikea goods together is a whole another story. The parts never fit, there’s always a few screws missing from the package and you’ll have to use brutal force to get your Dippa-Dappan into something resembling distantly a piece of furniture. And yes; we still are extremely jealous that Ikea wasn’t a Finnish invention.
I do have Ikea book shelf. And towels. And bowls. And picture frames. And curtains. Ok, I’ve selled a part of me to the Swedish satan because I don’t have money to shop elsewhere. But they haven’t been able to turn me into an optimistically smiling, tanned sailor yet.
And because our home rarely looks this clean, I had to take some photos for evidence! This is how we live (Thank God for the crop-tool in Photoshop that allows you to leave all the unflattering clutter and junk out of the pictures!). Our apartment is about 55 square meters in size and has two rooms and a kitchen.
