To shake up our youth group meetings, we decided to take the whole group to the movies tonight. That's right ... the newest Indiana Jones adventure thriller is in town at the local movie, cinema or kino, take your pick.
The kino in Cesis is just a little different from our local cinemas in the US. First, you go into a very small lobby and buy your ticket through a very small window (which makes for me yelling how many tickets I want in a mixture of English and Latvian) from a guy you can't hardly see. After you buy your tickets you proceed to the next door but it is locked. You wait a couple of minutes and the guy who sold you the ticket now comes around and unlocks the door, examines your ticket and then lets you pass. (Some ticket forger could have done something to the tickets in the 6 steps from where he sold it to you.)
I forgot to mention that this kino is just a little on the small side. While we were waiting outside for a few of the other kids to show up, a man came out and said something to me. I pretended I knew what he said and just nodded and told him I was waiting for one more. He smiled and walked away. Once I got inside the main theater I realized he was happy because we had enough people show up to actually have the movie shown.
You pay a few santimi extra to sit in the balcony but they actually have pretty nice seats. They are similar to a two-person love seat. The 9 total paying patrons settled back for a good shoot-em up adventure film in which the good guys win.
There are three languages being processed at the same time. The movie dialogue is actually in English (hooray!) but it is sub-titled in Latvian and Russian. I do ok until I start trying to read the Latvian and work on my vocabulary. The strangest thing is listening to the laughter at the funny parts. The English listeners laugh first because they hear it as it is spoken, then the Russian or Latvian readers laugh next as they catch-up to the punch line by reading.
This movie theater has no concession stand. NO popcorn! I've tried to talk to them about popcorn marketing and the economics of smell-a-vision but it hasn't helped; we still have no popcorn, or cokes, or nachos, or anything. We stop off at the Mini-Top (small grocery store around the corner) and stock up on a kind of sour, gummy worms and soft drinks. It is still not the same...you can't watch a good movie without popcorn.
Our kids had a good time and seemed to enjoy the movie. We didn't know until we got there that Indiana Jones main adversaries are the Russian Communists (time frame was supposed to be 1957). Most of our kids are Latvian but a few have Russian parents or grandparents on one or both sides. We may have to do some discussions at the next meeting.
Indiana Jones vs. the Russians and I'm sitting in a movie theater in Latvia watching it all happen! Who would have ever thought it???
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