Swedish Tourist Traps: Shopping at Gekas Ullared in Halland

I live in the Skane region, which is the southern tip of Sweden. Regions here are much like states in the United States. Just above Skane is the region of Halland. I had been concentrating on exploring every inch of Skane before moving up north for explorations, but our friends and neighbors had been reporting that they had heard rumors that Gekas Ullared up in Halland had surpassed the biggest Amusement Park in Sweden as the number one Tourist destination. Of course, I had to go investigate. I mean, how does a shopping center reach the pinnacle of travel and tourism? I like to shop more than most folks... but top spot? Yes. I had to go check it out at once. I found lots of found stuff on this road trip through Halland, but that Gekas Ullared... oh wow.

There are signs everywhere leading to Gekas Ullared. Just follow the west coast of Sweden and look for the sign just a bit south of Goteborg and you can't help but find the place. (There is a dot above that 'a' in Gekas, but Associated Content doesn't like it when I try to spell Scandinavian words properly, so just pretend like it's there.) Ullared is the name of this small town. Gekas is the name of a ginormous store there, which is surrounded by smaller outlets.

I really hate to compare anything in life to WalMart, but that is the closest thing you have in the United States... yet even the superest of Super WalMarts cannot begin to compare to Gekas. When I say huge, please feel free to insert several other qualifiers in front of that. It is like twice the size of the biggest WalMart, and with two floors. They have everything in this place. We are talking from TVs to pet toys. From clothing to camping gear. From automotive to flat screen TVs. You need it? It's here for sure. What's more, it is so unbelievably cheap that I had to stare at the tags to make sure I wasn't seeing things.

The current exchange rate is 6.8 Swedish Kronor to the American dollar. So when I tell you that I picked up 3 adorable summer strappy frilly tops for 19 kronor per, you know that is under 3 bucks each. Sun dresses? I paid 29 kronor each for 2 of them. Painting canvases? Try some big 70x50cm stretched canvases for a mere 49 kronor each. I bought 4 of those for less than I could buy one of them at my local art supply dealer. I should have bought every one they had on the shelf. Hmmm me thinks another trip up there soon is in order...

The downside to this wonderland of shopping is that it is not a secret. Oh no. The place is jam-packed every single day, and for good reason. It is not just people either. Every single person has at least one shopping cart with them, usually two. When you come here, you come to load up. Fighting through the aisles against all those masses of people and carts is not an easy task. Oh no. This is war, folks. It isn't as bad as the great Cabbage Patch war of 1981, but it's close. Come prepared to edge and elbow your way in to grab that cool item before anyone else does. Politeness be damned. I didn't encounter any violence, but this is serious shopping and not for the faint of heart by any means.

My husband had warned me that the lines to check out were rumored to be at about 3 hours long, but that was not the case at all on a Tuesday during high summer. The store was wall-to-wall people, but my check-out time was under 15 minutes. amazing, that.

Once you get out of Gekas, there is plenty more to explore if you have any money left. Oh yes. Gekas is surrounded by lots of wonderful outlet stores all on the same property. Purses, hats, garden supplies... you name it. I began drooling when I spied an H&M outlet store and came out of there with yet more adorable summer outfits and undergarments for half of what I would pay at their regular stores.

To recharge your batteries in between diving back into the madness, there are numerous kiosks and eateries. They even have a Burger King. I swayed my husband away from that and we had the best burgers ever across the way from BK at a korv kiosk. You can get pretty much any kind of food you want, but I wanted a burger. So there.

There are numerous hotels and campgrounds in the area if you want to make a weekend of the shopping frenzy, and there is even a regular bus that runs every 15 minutes to take you to and from this Den of Delightful Deals to wherever you are staying. The parking lot is huge, as you can well imagine, but it is very hard to find a spot... even on Tuesday.

Now, if you are with your shopping-phobic spouse, as I was, just start him walking the opposite direction. He'll find a wonderful forest complete with gorgeous lake to sit and fish while you rack up his credit card.

So. Is Gekas Ullared the end-all-be-all tourist trap for travelers coming to Sweden? Well no. It isn't. That's a lot of hype. It is, however, a must stop kind of place if you are road tripping through the Halland region.