No Passport Required

Despite the hassle that air travel has become, I still love airports. I instantly get caught up in the energy of movement and the limitless possibilities behind every gate – be it the exotic or the mundane. And when it comes to airports, nothing compares to the international terminal. The coming and goings that have become so routine remain so very, very meaningful for each individual with an itinerary and a ticket. My sister lives abroad (you know her as the American Sector’s Berlin Correspondent – soon to be the American Sector’s Hudiksvall correspondent!) and every time she traveled to the states, a few of us would wait in the international terminal at O’Hare. While waiting for passengers to come through customs, you witness countless joyful family reunions and fill in the back-story for each one (my mother would tear up at every one she saw).

International terminals are transnational places – a space that lives outside the rules and customs of it’s host culture. It is both disorientating to most everyone going through, yet there is a democracy – we are all out of place. They are the trade stations of the modern day. Meeting places where you encounter and interact with the other, the foreigner, and the stranger.

It’s been a few years since I last traveled internationally, but today I was reminded of that same airport feeling. This happened, of all places, at Ikea. Ikea, I have decided, has joined airports as a transnational space. The last two Sundays, I have spent an insufferable amount of time at Ikea (ugh… don’t get me started) – but while I was there, I have been immersed in the global culture. Sure, it’s Swedish…. and the meatballs are delicious – but every immigrant community in Chicago was shopping there alongside me. The Poles, the Ukrainians, the Indians, the Mexicans, the Japanese, the Koreans, and at least one confirmed Lithuanian. You hear more languages in an hour than you do flipping through local cable access. And, as opposed to airports, there is a permanence to the Ikea globalism because these people are shopping, presumably, for their homes. They are here – living, working, shopping, and reshaping the American dream as we know it.