Yesterday I decided to go to Ikea. Not because I needed to buy anything for our hovel. (Living here temporarily it would be silly to buy anything but truly necessary items. I have been debating in my head for 3 months now whether a tea kettle is a necessary item. I have looked at them in a million stores, yet I can still say the answer is NO. A saucepan will do just fine to boil water, even if pouring it out can be rather tricky.) I decided to go just for the ride. Because of course Ikea is located in some far-flung outreach of the city. I just wanted to explore the bike paths that wind around the outskirts of town. I love that at every intersection there are signs with meter markings to other destinations "Diemen 10", "Haarlem 20". It was rather smelly driving through the countryside though. I couldn't tell if it was the fertilizer for the fields or just the ditches with muddy water. It was rather odd riding on a bike path that ran along the freeway, while listening to Elastica's "car song".
I ended up at Ajax's ArenA (spelled with two capital A's for the soccer team I guess) which had a shiny new mall next to it. It was an amazing modern architectural feat. I didn’t really spend too much time looking around in the stores though, because all of them were home-design shops. Every shop, and we're talking at least 50 of them, had its own little showroom, boggling the mind with a zillion combinations of how your dream house could look like if you only had the will to slough through them all: kitchens with shiny brushed metal stoves and countertop espresso machines, living rooms with overstuffed chairs and precision lighting, glistening hardwood floors samples and paints in a thousand deliciously tasteful shades. I snapped this photo and quickly left before I got dizzy.
I eventually found the Ikea, looked around a bit. It wasn’t all that exciting having just been to the Vila ArenA mall, I must say the Dutch have outdone the Swedes in this round.
Rowing down the amstel. Part of the scenery on the path out of town.
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