Ain’t Life Grand?

You know, if there weren’t dramas in life it’d be kinda boring huh? It’s just, how many dramas does one need?

Went to IKEA on the weekend to pick up some much needed things i.e. a bed, a couch, a deskchair and whatnot and was happy with the shopping experience (as far as shopping experiences go anywho!!) Seeing as the last mission we had there we hired a van and brought the stuff back ourselves we thought that we’d make it easy on ourselves this time and get it all delivered. Generally one can’t complain about IKEA, it looks nice and is relatively cheap. Sometimes (as in the past) you have to return bits because they’re broken, but for the price you kinda expect that so it’s ok.

Anyway, the delivery guy said he’d be at our place between 4-5pm which was great because it gave us time to go to the bikeshop to drop it in and get the wheels trued (from my accident with the car the other week). I think I should remind everyone here that Berlin is a BIG place, everything is sooooo spread out that it generally takes at least half an hour to get anywhere. Also, because of the church, everything is closed on Sunday, therfore you have to squeeze everthing you need to do into Saturday. So, back to my point, delivery guy 4-5pm, we were at the bikeshop which is (funnily enough) about 1/2 an hour from our house at around 2.30pm and my phone rings. It’s the delivery guy saying that he’s out the front of our place and where are we?

Great!!

So, we raced back to our house (record time 20mins) to meet the very pissed off for no reason delivery guy to accept our goods. They hadn’t been treated so well on the way to our place, holes in boxes, visibly ripped fabric (underneath the couch so it didn’t matter) but come on!, are we paying for a service or a disservice?? Took the boxes inside, signed the delivery form begrudgingly and left our place straight away because we still had another million and one things to do.

When we finally got home from shopping (I was buggered) but it was time to put the things together. We started with the couch which was a pretty straight forward affair and moved on to the deskchair, oh oh, wrong base on the chair. It can’t go up or down or tilt back, oh well, it’s pretty light and can be taken back to IKEA for replacement on the S-Bahn relatively easily (forgot to mention that IKEA is a long way away;)). Still a pain in the ass but hey-ho!!

Moved on to the bed, opened up the first box and all looked well, four white legs on which the bed sits . Ina opened the second box and looked inside and said to me “why is it blue?”. I looked and initially thought that it was just undercoat on the inside pieces of the bed but boy was I wrong. Yes, we had a baby blue, wrong sized bed. Gotta say, fan fucking tastic!!!!! The box’s serial number matched up with that on the order form so it was either a matter of incorrect purchase order or incorrect product in box. I am quite sure it is the latter as I have found this product nowhere on any IKEA site. I’m sure when we return it the people at IKEA won’t even know what it is. Makes you kinda wonder how many other people this has happened to.

So excellent; the biggest and heaviest thing has to be returned to a store ages away by public transport before the end of today. Why? Because Dan, a friend from Sydney, is arriving tommorrow and is staying at our place therefore it needs to be tidy and we can’t be sleeping on the floor anymore. I tell you what, that’s just gonna be fantastic at the end of an 8hour day at work. Not to mention I also have to pick up my bike from the bikeshop and get a new mouse from Apple because the one Ina received with her computer doesn’t work.

Today is going to be a great day!!!! Hallelujah……………