I started today with some festive Christmas linguistics reading:
Chomsky, Radford, Cook, Ouhalla and I spent the morning together, humbug-ing away.
After that I called my parents, who had just finished eating a Norwegian Christmas dinner.
My mother is a cook of such quality that I generally don’t eat holiday meals if they’re not cooked by her. Mom always cooks Norwegian food for Christmas, and there’s nothing that could replace it.
With all that being said, I’ve not been home in a while, and I thought it would be nice to have some Scandinavian food on Christmas. I told my mother that I planned to go to the Beijing IKEA for Swedish food. She approved, but pointed out that their meatballs are Swedish, and thus inferior in taste, quality, and character to the Norwegian meatballs I’m used to. At first opportunity I’ll find her an apron with a Norwegian flag on it so to anchor  her cookbook jingoism.
(A quick aside: When the Monty Python movie Life of Brian was released, it wound up being banned in Norway. The Swedes proceeded to advertise the film as “So Funny It Was Banned In Norway.”)
The Beijing IKEA is far away from everything, at least, that’s how it seems if you arrive at the 太阳宫 (Taiyanggong) subway station (Line 10). It takes about an hour by foot to arrive at IKEA from the subway station. Of course, it might take less time if you don’t get lost.
IKEA is sort of diagonal from the subway station, on the other side of Taiyanggong Park (太阳宫公å›). In fact, you can almost see the IKEA from the subway. So, it made sense to try to cut through the park to try to get there. After all, parks have more than one gate, right?
Wrong.
The park was almost completely empty, and looked like one of the sets from Children of Men. Creepy derelict toys everywhere. Signs said that the lake opens for skating tomorrow. The frozen lake is covered by a good inch of dust and dirt; I mistook the flags demarcating the skating rink for ringing off a paved go-kart course.
It was getting dark and horribly cold, so I hightailed it out of the park.
The IKEA restaurant is on the third floor. And it’s pretty great.
The only disappointment was the lack of that good lingonberry drink that you can get at IKEA in the States.
I was shocked to see most of the other diners eating spaghetti or Chinese food. A plate of spaghetti was Â¥15. The salmon plate was also Â¥15. How does it make any sort of financial sense to buy spaghetti at the same price as salmon? Had the spaghetti cost Â¥6, sure. But Â¥15?[1. Now you’re not surprised I don’t celebrate Christmas, are you?]
After stuffing myself there was a bit of walking through the store (prices are lower here on most items). Amazingly, the Beijing IKEA does have a little Swedish grocery store. There was no  bond-ost cheese or Swedish fish candy (!), but most of the other staples were available, including some Swedish vodka that I guess can’t be sold at IKEA stores in Washington State.
After some grocery shopping I caught bus 536 to 三元桥 (Line 10)…the station I should have come from in the first place.
Happy Christmas and Happy New Year. Remember, religion isn’t necessary for morality: be good for goodness’ sake.