The Movies

The other evening I went to see Catching Fire in theaters with my host mom. We brought in bags of snacks and chocolate, because unlike in America, people here don’t stop you from bringing food into movie theaters. Food at the movies is as expensive as back home, but the selection is different. You can buy RitterSport bars (a kind of German chocolate), ice cream, and the popcorn is sweet, not salty.

It takes some getting used to to watch dubbed movies. Since America has Hollywood, a lot of popular movies here were originally filmed in English and later dubbed in German. Not only do the words not match up with mouth movements, but it’s a bit strange to hear an actor with a distinctive voice have a completely other voice, and furthermore speak in German.

There are some theaters that play movies in its original English, but we went to see the German version of Catching Fire. That actually worked out well for me, at this point I can follow most of movies and TV shows. That, and the fact that I have basic knowledge of the plot from reading the book once and being mildly disappointed. I can tell my German is improving, even though people still sometimes wear patient little smiles of endearment when I talk. R’s are still especially hard, a lot of people think I’m Russian when they first meet me because apparently they don’t have strong R’s either. Also someone thought I was Irish. I was in a cell phone store trying to sort out my phone difficulties and realizing my vocabulary includes surprisingly few technological words. Eventually the salesman said, “Do you want to speak English?”
    “Yes, I really do.”
    He also spoke English well, with a Texas accent, and told me he had relatives in Texas, and he told me my accent sounded Irish “because a lot of people who live in America come from Ireland.” I told him that was true about 100 years ago in New York, but today in Pennsylvania there are almost no first generation Irish people. To compensate I told him Pennsylvania was pretty close to New York, so maybe I did have an Irish accent. He seemed to take it.

Wichtige Wörter

• das Kino - movie theater
• der Film - movie
• Panem - what Germans call The Hunger Games series. It took me a while to figure that one out.
• der Vertrag - I still don’t really know. Something phone contract related.

der Dom - a carnival in Hamburg, one in the winter and one in the spring. It lasts a few weeks and there are lots of rides and food.

Weihnachtsmarkt - sneak preview!