Íkea.

Is Ikea one of the places one should not venture alone, kind of like Disneyland? Is it worse to be here without someone special, as the average customer is here with their significant other (picking up cheap but still relatively good-looking furniture for their first apartment together, naturally) or their cute and small family? I kind of like it. I also like that the wine flows so freely in Europe; I am fairly certain that there is not a worker at Ikea, Tempe, assigned the job of pouring white and rose wines at the start of the food line. How quaint! And the fact that you can buy entire twist-top bottles for, like, four euros? C'est brilliant! I am proud of myself for resisting!

Maybe Ikea is bad, though. I mean, I can recount at least one blog that suggests going here post-breakup will only lead to sad, sad memories of coming here with the now-ex boyfriend. I personally think of the scene in "500 days of Summer," where Joseph Gordon Levitt (god, please grant me a boy dressed in sweatervests and pumas. please?) and Zooey Deschanel (i'll take her hair for myself, please), frolick in the model rooms. And I myself can't help remembering going to Ikea with a boy I once loved, who picked me up with my favorite coffee drink and bought shelves he never put up just so we could spend time together. Ikea is romantic, apparently, after all.

I think I'll go buy that bottle of wine. I wonder how much French I would need to know for the job of official pourer?