DEODORANT! Piles of deodorant, the staff havent even bothered to put them on shelves. All around are all kinds of cosmetics in all colours, types and sizes. A few steps away are rugged outdoor clothes, winter jackets and rain pants and on the other side, underwear and t-shirts. Moving on to lighter clothes, jeans, shirts, sweatshirts and even suits. Simple white signs with text over the clothes racks proclaim the low prices 199, 149 and finally 599 for a suit.

The central aisle is full of people, a slow trickle of shopping carts laden with everything from food to clothes, from cleaning materials to toys. I am now in the children’s clothes section, brightly coloured shirts all around. Flowing into the girls section, suddenly everything is pink. A message from my girl friend sets me on the move again. I walk through the women’s clothes section, a series of bras flowing past on the left, and bikinis on the right, and I find her in front of a wall of sunglasses; something I actually need.  We move slowly through the toy section until we come back to electronics close to the sun glasses. We explore DVDs and household electronics until we reach kitchen appliances and get a frying pan. From there on everything is a jumble, first lamps then textiles and towels, food and finally garden tools. We split up at feminine hygiene and I take a quick look around bags then we move together back through food again until we reach the bottom floor full of hand tools, sport goods and fishing gear then head back up to the cash register.

This place really has everything you can possibly need and we have likely taken one of the fastest tours possible through all of it. It’s also likely that we bought less stuff than most here. I thought some of the chinese markets where ultra commercial but considering the diminutive size of Swedens population, this really is the mecca of blatant commercialism, where people come on pilgrimages to pray to the materialist gods.