The couch

Yesterday we got a new couch.
The word for couch in German is (dramatic pause) sofa. See, you can already speak German. If only it were always that easy. The new couch is part of the evolution of our apartment. At first, it was just me, Brian and our air bed. Then came the Ikea phase.

I see Ikea as a necessary evil. Going through the store makes me feel like a hamster crawling through my little maze of tubes, hoping to find a little dish of food pellets at the end (i.e. where they sell the meat balls). The whole system works because the customer, like the hamster, is not that smart. Brian actively hates Ikea. He compares the route that you have to walk through the store to a Swedish-inspired death march. Instead of execution, you end up buying things with names like Lack and Ektorp and Kivik. This is followed by swearing and sweating back at home while you assemble the furniture. The instructions are so easy they are wordless, and drawings of smiling little guys show you just how easy it is. I hate those guys.

But when you are in a new place without a ton of money, and the few items of furniture you shipped are stuck out on a container ship somewhere, Ikea's where you have to go. During the Ikea phasse we added a bed (with Ikea frame) and our blue Ikea couch and some cheap Ikea tables to the apartment. We're not the only ones; almost everyone I've met in Germany has the same tables.

Now we are ready to take the next step and get some grown-up furniture... or at least one piece. In the two years we've had the blue couch (translation - sofa), we've complained about it for about a year and nine months. So we moved it to our guest bedroom, added a second-hand chest and deflated the air bed. (Since all of you who said you'd come visit have yet to show up, we will not keep the bed ready for you any more.) The new couch came from a real grown-up furniture store, where most of the couches are either ultra modern with no arm rests, or seem to be made for dentist's waiting rooms.

I know it's tempting to read into the purchase of our couch as if it's some kind of sign (a friend of ours called it an 'anchor' the other day). It's not symbolic of anything other than our liberation from Ikea, land of Swedish hamsters and maddening do-it-yourself assembly. Or maybe it's just a step toward liberation - we still have those tables, and so do all of our friends.