Our first day -> Ikea;)

The final arrival
I did manage to get to the apartment in Berkeley and join my two housemates, Terese and Maria (Elisabeth arrived later on). The apartment was not furnished, not cleaned and there were almost growing stuff out of the carpet which we had to sit on. Short black hairs everywhere, it definitely used to be a guy’s apartment..
Getting out of sweaty clothes, having a decent shower, and finally being able to open the badly treated suitcase, there was nothing more tempting than going to sleep in a confy bed. But with no bed and a living carpet (that we found quite disturbing) there was nothing to do but to find IKEA.

IKEA!

Mentioning "Ikea" at the car rental place gave us the advantage of getting their biggest van. Not only was it the biggest van at the rental place, but the biggest I’ve ever seen. Getting all four (a guy named Terje joined us) into the van we realized it only had two seats. Not a problem in America. But with the very sensitive breaks it meant sliding forth and back for Terese and Maria who had nothing to sit on, better yet to hold on to, while Terje and I tried to figure out how to drive properly – and in the right direction – way up front. Ikea was about 10 minutes away by car. It took us 45. Both ways.
As big as the trunk was we managed to fill it up. To the very last cm. Maria and Terese finally had something to hold on to, though the item was more likely to fall ON them if they did..
Good thing we had kjöttbullar and lingon to look forward to this first night in exotic America.