The furniture store as a haven of carelessness – Bavaria

The man with the golden bell in his hand has a message to make. He’s standing on the ground floor of a stately furniture store in the foothills of the Alps, surrounded by gin bottles and mixed drinks. He starts ringing the bell vigorously and shouts, “The bar is now open! The bar is now open!” It’s midday on a Sunday shopping day, and the furniture store has been open for an hour. His exact location and name are irrelevant for this text, after all, several furniture stores in Upper Bavaria opened on this Sunday. And to be honest, the differences between them are often rather small anyway. In the assortment as well as on the meta level.

Because while this complicated world out there changes every day, the furniture store, no matter what it’s called, is an anchor. A time-out cast in concrete with a Premium Plus customer card and panorama restaurant. A familiar consumer institution that has adapted to the spirit of the times over the decades, but surprisingly has changed very little. So “oak rustico”, formerly mocked as the epitome of German petit bourgeoisie, has now been renamed to the more cosmopolitan “oak rustico”. The red oriental carpet heaps, on the other hand, are still there – and smell just as strange as they did 20 years ago. The only mystery is who actually buys it. And really always – and this Sunday too – after every furniture store curve, silent couples sit at the salespeople’s tables, assuring them that you “certainly can’t go wrong” when buying this or that kitchen.

No push message from the world out there can disturb this special order and peace. Within the thick, windowless walls of the furniture temple there is hardly any earthly reception. You are isolated. One is safe. One is free from the needs out there. This is how churches must once have felt. The furniture store is a place where your worries are taken away. Not just the man with the golden bell. Although this certainly helps to transcend into this state.

But if you really want to feel the furniture store phenomenon, you have to drive up to furniture store heaven: the panorama restaurant. Here, between half-empty wheat beer glasses and plates with stretched out white sausage skins, her gaze roaming over the fields and the highway, she waits, realizing that at the end of the day you will have to go out into that world out there again. With a chest of drawers, type “oak rustico”, in the trunk.

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