The German Movie Experience...

Happy Monday Everyone! I hope you all had a great weekend! Our's was pretty low-key...

We went to see James Bond on Friday evening. That was definitely an experience!! It was a good movie, but not quite as good as we were expecting. There was alot of action, but not alot of substance... However, I must admit that Daniel Craig (a.k.a. James Bond) looked very good! :) The movie experience in itself was rather interesting... The movie was scheduled to start at 10:45, so we arrived a few minutes early and found our seats. When you buy the tickets online, they assign a seat to you, so finding our seats was quite easy. (Oh, and for those of you who may be wondering... We were able to find the "fetching automat" and we were able to "fetch" our tickets very easily! :)) Well, we sat in the theatre for a while and waited for the previews to come on... At 10:55, I looked at my watch and realized that it was already 10 minutes past the time the movie was scheduled to begin. Now, in the U.S., if a movie has to start late, then there is usually an announcement explaining the situation... This was not the case here. :) Instead, we sat waiting for another 10-15 minutes before the previews finally started. (Mind you, the previews were all in German so we had no idea what they were about... Great!) Well, after about 5 previews, an advertisement for ice cream was shown... After the ad was over, the screen went blank and the overhead lights came up... Hmmmm? So, we all sat and waited some more, all the while trying to figure out what the hold up was... Well, about five minutes later, we finally figured it out. The "ice cream" man was walking around through each of the individual theatres selling ice cream... So, after waiting for him to arrive in our theatre for almost 10 minutes, he finally showed up... and then we had to wait some more so that everyone could buy their ice cream for the show... Lovely! After the ice cream man finished selling his products, the lights went out again. At this point I figured that the movie was about to start... Nope, I was proven wrong! Instead, we sat through about four more previews! Once those were over, the movie finally started... almost 45 minutes past the original start time... ugh!! Since we've been here, I've noticed that they have a very laid-back attitude when it comes to time, and this just proved how laid back about it they really are! It's crazy!! Let's just say, that we probably won't be going to too many movies while we're over here... I don't think I have the patience for them! :)

After all of the "excitement" at the movies, the rest of our weekend was pretty uneventful. I did get to practice driving on Saturday. It wasn't as bad as I was expecting. I did fine with the navigating and whatnot... I wasn't even too bothered by the fact that the streets are so narrow. It was driving a manual transmission that was the problem! I drove about 5 miles and somehow managed to stall the car 6 -7 times... Great! We'll just say that I need alot more practice before I start taking any road trips! :)

On Sunday, we had coffee with a Scottish couple that I've met since moving here... So, it was nice to visit with them. After coffee, we ended up spending the rest of the day studying German... Fun, fun! At this point, we know how to introduce ourselves and how to order drinks at a restaurant... (I've got ordering coffee down to a science! :)) Watch out... at the rate we're going, we'll be speaking fluently within the next few weeks! Ha, ha! :)

Well, I should probably head to bed... We have a pretty busy week ahead of us, and then we're heading to Berlin on Friday... yay!! :) I hope you all had a great Monday! Miss you!