25 years ago we moved to Großburgwedel, which is a small town on the A7 Autobahn about 15 miles north of Hannover. Our children really liked Großburgwedel, especially the large furniture store near the Autobahn exit.

The Swedish furniture store IKEA has one of its typical large stores about one mile from our apartment in Großburgwedel. In addition to patronizing the store by purchasing furniture, we also enjoyed visiting it at times so our children could play in the store’s play area. Like all IKEA stores, the one in Großburgwedel also has a reasonably priced cafeteria. In a play on words, Germans turned the letters IKEA into a saying, "Idioten kaufen einfach alles", which translates as "Idiots will buy anything."

IKEA has one of its newer stores some 5000 miles from Großburgwedel in Frisco, Texas. Guess who likes to visit the store? Our daughter Rachel. So this week we made an obligatory family trip to IKEA with her and grandchildren Sean and Adrian. The store in Frisco is pretty much the same as the one in Großburgwedel, except for the fact that it is larger, like most everything else in Texas. Now if these folks around here could just pronounce IKEA the European way!