We had only been in Sweden for a few weeks when we took our first trip to IKEA. Our nearest store is up near the Finnish border, about an hour and a half driving time from home. I remember being terribly excited by the prospect, finally travelling to holy ground. How naive I was. The chaos of an IKEA experience is not something that one can prepare oneself for. Certainly nothing like a young starry eyed Kiwi boy had ever seen before. It was survival of the fittest, with steel trolleys charging from all directions. I don't know exactly how many people were at the IKEA store that day, but I'm pretty sure that it must have emptied out the best part of the North of both Sweden and Finland. The experience for me was so traumatic that, had there been a flight out of the country that evening, I would have been in a front row seat. The chaos and sheer madness was that bad.
Since that time I've become a bit more street smart when it comes to understanding the Swedish psyche. They simply do things differently. You can't explain it, you can't train for it, and you sure as Hell can't fight it. But there is one bright spot. Swedes are unique creatures of habit and conformity. More so that any other people I've met. The lack of flexibility is enough to do your head in at times. But once you figure out that you'll never ever change them, you can at least work around them. After all, you can pretty much guarantee what any Swede is going to do at any given time on any given day.
With that invaluable experience tucked away, we've now come up with the perfect IKEA battle plan. And it goes something like this:
First up, avoid weekends if you can. That's pretty obvious, and applies in every country.
If you must travel to IKEA on a weekend, avoid weekends immediately following child support payment day, and salary pay day. Pretty much everyone in Sweden gets paid on the same pay of the month. Which means that the whole country goes out to shop on the following weekend (lönehelg). The best time to go out, if you can, is a couple of weeks after pay day. When the country is broke. Child support (barn bidrag) day is generally the week before pay day. So, as a rule, avoid that fortnight when everyone is flush. Still leaves you a healthy two weeks each month to get in some shopping in realtive peace and comfort.
Now you've got the day sorted out, it's time to pin down the time. Typically, we'd spend up to about 2 hours at IKEA. Which usually included the mandatory meatballs meal in the middle. Start out on your journey mid morning and you'll be nose to tail in a giant convoy of Volvos towing rented trailers. Another good point to remember is, if you need to hire a trailer for any reason, avoid the weekends mentioned above. Or book well in advance.
Back to the time. This is where the lemming trait of your average Swede is a bonus. They all arrive at IKEA between about 10am and lunchtime. Without fail. If you follow this trend, your 2 hour browse can easily turn into a 4 hour slow shuffle. Outside, the trailers will start getting loaded up between around 2 and 4pm. If you value the shine on your car, avoid moving through the car park at all times during this period. And, if you occassionally become "slightly" stressed on the roads, you don't want to be travelling away from an IKEA store around this time.
Which leads on to the solution. We stumbled on to this by accident a couple of trips back. Now it's our Bible to a trouble free IKEA experience. First up, we leave home at around 3:30pm. Madness, I hear the Swedes out there cry. Not a car in front of us on the way up. And not a bare patch of asphalt able to be seen under the tsunami of trucks and trailers crawling home on the other side of the motorway. The 90 minute trip up the E4 gets us into the IKEA car park about 5pm. Welcome to Ghost Town Central. A car park which just 2 hours earlier had seen almost 1,000 cars and covered trailers parked on top of each other, now has about 10 scattered around. The coveted "door park" is well within your grasp.
Now we're in the store. The store shuts at 7pm every night. So we've got a cool 2 hours. At this point you realise that the number of staff in the store is double the number of customers left in the store. We're fighting them off with a pointed stick. Need to powder your nose ? No problem, take your pick of empty booths. Luxury.
With the population of Liechenstein safely removed from the store, our intended 2 hour browse suddenly became a whole lot quicker. Which was a good thing really, because the reataurant closed at 6pm. A bit of forward planning called for here. Timing it to the second, we arrived into the restaurant area at 5 minutes before 6pm. Just as the friendly serving guy was about to pack up the meatballs for the night. Not So Fast, My Fine Indian Friend. 60 seconds later and we had the entire restaurant to ourselves. Not a soul in sight. Normally we'd be fighting to be heard over screaming kids and slamming meal trolleys.
Well fed and casually winding our way through the store, we collected all the stuff on our list and headed for the checkouts. A level head and a steady nerve is needed in this part of the store. Many a lost soul has cracked under the pressure of IKEA checkout queues. But now is the time to pat oneself on the back. This is where all that planning comes together. Twenty minutes before closing time. 16 queuing aisles, and a grand total of 4 customers checking out. I shit you not. I felt tears welling up. My wife grabbed my arm as we stared in silent wonder. We didn't say a word. We didn't need to. We couldn't.
5 minutes later we were loaded up and on our way home along a now totally deserted highway. Maybe we'll never see another day like this one again. Maybe it was Sweden saying "sorry for all the shit I've put you through". Maybe that's the one good thing we were destined to have in life. If those vacant queue aisles at IKEA was it, then I reckon I've come out ahead. Today, I die happy.
