Киното

One of the cool things about my town is that there is a movie theater in the center. Not many towns have movie theaters in Bulgaria and certainly not many towns that only have twenty five thousand people.

Over the past nine months or so I met the owner of the theater and talked to him quite a bit. He remembers me because I am the American in town and also because many times I am the only person who shows up to watch the movies. The owner is a cool guy who also owns the cinema cafe right below the movie theater. He operates the theater at a loss because he loves movies, a very expensive hobby. Several weeks ago I was talking to him about movies which had come out recently and the new James Bond film Casino Royale came up. I told him that I was a huge Bond fan and he told me he was too and that he was going to get the movie about a month after it came out in Sofia.

Well last week I went to see V is for Ventetta (a very predictable and cliched film) and he told me that next week he would be getting Bond, I could barely contain my excitement. Well this Friday Bond came and I went to see it both Friday and Saturday (today). There are lots of other blogs and web sites which talk about movies and almost all of them have better writers then me so I won't go into an in depth review. I will say this however: Casino Royale is the best Bond film I have ever seen and Daniel Craig was perfect as Bond. Everyone should go see this film.

Pop goes the Bulgarian

As in many countries people celebrate the new year here in Bulgaria with fireworks. For the past several weeks children have been setting off fireworks during the day all over town. Now what I mean by a firework is a small explosion. Well sometimes it's not that small. Children set these explosions off by cars, doors, plants, people, and animals. Most of the time the bang is far away and just startles you a bit, but sometimes they are quite close. One time I was using the atm when a firework went off very close, I didn't see exactly where, and but my ear was ringing for several minutes. It is a miracle that more children don't get their hands and fingers blown off by these things. These kids are managing to cheat Darwinism, for now at least.

The truly amazing thing is that there were lots of people around and no one did anything, they just kept wandering around doing whatever it was that they were doing. I couldn't help but think that if this happened back in the States people would have gotten pissed off and hunted down the children and called the police. But here people don't seem to care. I've often wondered what you would have to do to get people to react and do something.

Born in a barn

Well I don't really have much to write about right now. This is the last week of school before our Christmas break and I can't wait for the time off. Everyone is really tired and needs a break. But one thing I think that is interesting about Bulgarians is how they absolutely hate drafts. Any type of air circulation actually. They believe that drafts cause you to become sick and that baba Marta will come and burn you (at least I think that's it, I have a hard time paying attention to stuff like that, no matter what the reason is Bulgarians hate fresh air, hence all of the smoking, pollution, etc.). The interesting think though is that many people leave doors open all the time when they come into and out of a building. It does not matter what temperature the weather is outside, they leave the door open. One thing I do when I am at a cafe or restaurant is try to get a seat facing the door. I do this for several reasons: 1) In case any assassins enter who want to kill me they won't have the element of surprise (laugh if you want but Wild Bill didn't do that once and look what happened to him), 2) I watch people come into and leave the place and leave the door open. Followed by someone getting up and closing the door. I know what you are thinking: wow your life is insanely boring. Well I'd love to argue with you but you are right and someone with shifty eyes just came into this cafe and I have to keep my eyes on him.