Humphrey Bogart...and other matters.

Sunday evening I went to see the movie Becoming Jane (about Jane Austen) with Rachel. I have found that it is actually pretty easy to find U.S. movies here in English (it seems subtitles are more common than dubbing thankfully). They may be released here several months later, but eventually they will come (or at least some of them). This was the second time I had been to this theater; I went with Rachel to see a movie there on Friday evening. In this movie theater, the screening rooms are not labeled by numbers but each is named after a classic movie star (Humphrey Bogart, Marilyn Monroe, James Dean, etc.). We were in the Humphrey Bogart room again. This is the smallest of the screening rooms. There are about fifty seats in the room; it has four or five rows of eight seats across. In order to make things more exciting and infinitely more complicated, you are assigned a seat when you buy a ticket. After you are directed towards the correct screening room, a man guarding the door checks your ticket and directs you to the correct seat. Well, the four of us (two of Rachel's friends, who are swiftly becoming my friends, joined us) sat down in the wrong seats. We were to be sitting in seats five, six, seven and eight. We sat in seats two, three, four, and five. This was easily fixed by the four of us moving down one seat so that were instead seated in seats one, two, three and four. Still not the correctly assigned seats, but everyone seemed happy. I was even more grateful that nobody put up a fuss when another couple arrived to sit in the row behind us. This couple had reserved their seats in advance (You can call several days in advance to reserve your preferred seats if you pay extra). Unfortunately, someone was already sitting in their seats. The movie had not yet started but the previews had started five or ten minutes ago. The two people who had knowingly (unlike us innocent foreigners) sat in the wrong seats refused to move up to their correct seats. (Since this particular room is so tiny and the screen so large sitting in one of the first two rows is very undesirable.) Then the employee who guards the door and directs the customers to their seats came in to see what all the commotion was about and why there will still people standing. The mother and daughter duo who were sitting in the incorrect seats then proceeded to tell the employee that they would not move and it was the couple's fault for arriving fifteen minutes late. The couple then stated that they had paid extra and would prefer to sit there. The mother then ranted and raved at the employee for several minutes but did not actually move. The employee (a suave, twenty something man who seemed to be working there more for the social interactions with his fellow employees and customers) balked and went to go get a supervisor. The supervisor came in, listened to the same spiel from the mother, stopped the movie (the previews), turned on the lights, and commenced to tell the woman she could move or leave. She again began to go into another tirade for a few minutes; during this time the woman in the couple said she would be willing to sit in the other seats. However, the supervisor made sure the woman and her daughter moved so they could have their reserved seats (which they paid extra to receive). The woman and her daughter decided that instead of moving up to their assigned seats they would sit on the bar stools that were placed on the steps. The movie was then able to begin again. In my humble opinion, this is a moral lesson on why assigned seating in movie theaters should not exist.

In other news, I had my first official class today. There were four of us (students) for the first twenty minutes and then there were three. One guy got pulled out and promoted several levels; he was able to hold a long conversation with the teacher in Serbian. The other two students are both older adults (over forty years old) and are already more advanced than I. The woman has been living in Serbia for two years, but just now decided to take lessons. She wasn't sure how long she would be here and whether it would be worth taking lessons until she just recently found out her husband's job is a permanent position. The man is from Australia (but is Italian making him Italian Australian) and took several lessons before coming to Serbia. He told me that he had been regularly meeting with someone for several hours a week for about a year before he recently arrived for practice. Their most important advantage lies in that they are both married to Serbians and thus have their own personal tutor. I have decided that people who are married or living with native Serbians have an unfair advantage and should be put in a separate class.

We spent today's class learning the alphabet(s) and practicing pronunciation. This was done by our teacher saying several words in Serbian and us (or I should say me) trying and failing to repeat them. I have not yet trained my ears to hear the difference between several of the letters. There are thirty letters in the Serbian alphabets; I have to learn both the Cyrillic alphabet and the Latin alphabet. We will meet five times a week for two forty-five minute sessions with a five minute break in between the two sessions. Sadly, I will be missing three of the days this week since I will be in Sarajevo. After being the most faithful student in attendance (by showing up twice last week to find no other students), I will become the least faithful.

I also found a possible apartment. It is a 20-25 minute bus ride from the center of town, but is in a nice, quiet part of Belgrade. It is a small studio apartment (meaning everything is in one big open room, or in this case in one small open room). The bed is a futon bed which is my couch for the day. It comes with a desk, a refrigerator, a stove, an oven, a washer (for clothes not dishes), a bureau/dresser, and some cabinets. If I were to rent this apartment, I would also have a small balcony. It has nice wooden floors and is in a new building. Although it is far from the center of town (where the WiB office and my language school are located), it still has all the necessities nearby (a post office, a BIG grocery store, a green market, and a commonly frequented bus stop). I haven't signed anything, but so far it is looking to be very promising.