Culture Shock at Ikea

“Jon?” I walked up. We went to the car. “Are you hungry?” I felt like a child. I didn’t know the language and I couldn’t get around on my own. “Yes, I haven’t eaten yet.” “Ikea?” We got on the highway and I felt that same feeling I felt at baggage claim. We could have just left Logan Airport in Boston and been going on I-93 to the Ikea in Stoughton Massachusetts, but it was Romania and I was with Tudor and Heyos. Strangers and tour guides.
The inside was like every Ikea in the world from Hong Kong to Atlanta. No other franchise, not even McDonalds or Starbucks looks and feels the same internationally the way Ikea does. A NOCKEBY is a NOCKEBY is a NOCKEBY and it will be displayed with a SOLIGT or maybe a FJÄDERMOLN.
In the children’s section Tudor picked up a set of TITTA DJUR, a set of animal finger puppets. “We should get these for the twins.” In the children’s section there were families with babies and families without babies, but all of them had dark hair, dark eyes and Romanian features. It struck me that unlike the Ikea in Stoughton where shoppers were a reflection of a “melting pot” culture, the shoppers at the Ikea in Romania were Romanians—a more homogenous culture. Unlike studying in France where I was with other students and professors from America here I was an outsider, but in a very familiar place. I felt dizzy, distracted and I looked around and saw a child holding a toy whining to his mother in Romanian.
It was then I realized for the first time in my life I was experiencing culture shock. I was in shock because it was almost a carbon copy of America, but not. Heyos looked over and smiled. “Let’s go.”
The three of us, TITTA DJUR in hand made our way to the check out, grabbed a few hot dogs, a soft serve and headed to the parking lot. Before giving the puppets to the twins Tudor took the shark, Heyos took the rabbit and I took the Lion. Driving away from the Ikea the shock faded away.
Looking out the window at the highway it felt like I fell asleep on a road trip and woken up in a new world, oddly similar to my own. It was like a sci-fi story or Oz, but, instead of spaceships or yellow bricks roads there were small cars and big highways. I had wanted to get lost, to get as far away as possible, but I ended up at an Ikea. Even though it looked like the Ikeas back home and I was eating a hot dog with ketchup and mustard, it was a thrilling, exotic moment that made me feel as far away from home as I could possibly be.