Crazy Maker

So it began… In Italy, we have found the majority of beds are as hard as a slab of marble. Dream bed? They’ve never heard of them in Italy. In hotels, I usually pile up the extra blankets or pillows on my side of the bed, for a somewhat lopsided, more comfortable night of sleep. In our apartment, I sleep on the extra pillows.

We did our research and found out for us to purchase a new mattress for our matrimoniale sized bed, would cost 2,000 euro, plus delivery fees. That’s $3,500! There’s no Sleep Country USA or Mattress World over here offering deals on mismatched sets. We found a less expensive option - there are two Ikea stores in Rome.

We have no experience shopping at Ikea in the States. We know its reputation as being a really big, really crowded warehouse, home furnishing shopping experience. And we’ve heard the quality of the merchandise isn’t worth the effort, however, desperate times call for desperate measures. We needed someone with experience to guide us. So, we grabbed our neighbor, an Aussie, who is living the same year abroad as us (she had been to Ikea already once, and mentioned she needed to go again.) We threw ourselves in a cab, and went to Ikea.

Ikea is a Crazy Maker, as quoted via text from one of my bestest friends in the whole world. She wasn’t lying! Ikea was packed with people! They were six deep around the customer service booths. Once we found the mattress topper we wanted, wrote down the name, size and corresponding numbers, we stood in line and waited for our turn to place our order.

In Italy, you have to be aggressive when waiting in line. An Italian will have no shame in cutting right in front of you. It happens to us all of the time. The phrase, “Sono prima!” comes in handy. Once our family was waiting at an empty taxi stand waiting for a taxi to pull up. Three gorgeous Italian women dressed in designer clothing and very high heels, walk up to wait for a taxi as well. When the taxi pulled up, one of the women went to grab the door handle. Not so fast! I grabbed the same door handle, said, “Sono prima!” The beautiful Italian knew she wasn’t going to win this battle, especially because I had the most coveted item in all of Italia with me – children. I ushered my children into the cab, my husband sheepishly hopped in the front (no man wants to possibly offend a luscious Italian woman, let alone three!) and off we went.

We encountered a problem at Ikea – no soft and cushy mattress topper in stock for us. All of that time and effort and no mattress. Sigh. We did find a few other much needed household items, like hangers for our clothes, stainless steel baking pans, wastepaper baskets, but no mattress. So, we decided to go to the other Ikea the following Monday. This time, we took the subway, which we had never done before and found, it was quite efficient. However, again, no mattress topper in stock. The customer service folks said there were plenty in Napoli and Firenze. Okay! We’ll gladly go to Firenze….

My husband looked up Ikea’s Firenze address and emailed it to me. I pulled it up on my iPhone, mapped it, no problem. We would enjoy a heavenly weekend in the Toscana countryside, visit with family, relax in the sun... We would wait and go to the Crazy Maker, on our way out of town. Sunday came and…

It took us about 60 minutes to wind ourselves around the various one way streets, through piazzas and roundabouts to find the address –and- no Ikea was to be found at that address. We went online and pulled up another address, out by the airport, but knew, it would probably take us another 60 minutes to find our way to that address. And there was no guarantee, this was the right place. Not to mention, working our way through the lines of people to put in our order and pay for it. Again a couple of hours at the Crazy Maker. By this time, we were all very hungry and really looking forward to a meal at one of the many memorable trattorias in Firenze. So we did what any Italian would do – we parked the car and enjoyed a wonderful lunch – cleaned our plates!

We drove home with happy memories of our weekend and knowing, it would be another day, to attempt the Crazy Maker.