Determined Women!

There is a group of American women who get together at a little cafe once a week. All of our husbands are on the same project here in Milan. A few of them wanted to go to IKEA (which is about 15 minutes away) and were discussing taking the IKEA bus to get there. I offered to drive, since I have a car. People were very excited and soon four of us had made plans to go to IKEA.

I find it funny that other American women are amazed that I will drive over here. None of them will. Granted, I won't drive into downtown Milan, but I'll drive in our suburban area and on the highways. I do think, though, that the Italians do drive kind of crazy. And I really hate roundabouts instead of stoplights.

Thursday we made our way to IKEA. The excitement was high! You have to understand that even though IKEA is not an American company, we have IKEA in America, so it's something familiar. I bought a foam pad for my mattress, as did one other lady. Plus we all bought from 1 to 3 bags of stuff.

Here's where the determination came in. I drive a Volkswagen Golf hatchback. The mattress pads we bought were rolled like a carpet and were each over 4 feet long. Somehow we managed to fit all of the bags into the back of the car or onto the people sitting in the backseat. The mattress pads were shoved from the back to the front through the middle of the car. I couldn't see out the back window at all. I couldn't even see the women sitting in the back seat!

But we made it back to San Donato with all of our purchases! I, as the driver, was probably the only one who was comfortable, but nobody cared! We had had an IKEA adventure and discovered that 4 determined women can cram a lot of stuff into a small hatchback!

And we've decided we're going back again.