Burgers and Movies

This weekend Anne and Mark nurtured their American roots a bit by ordering up some burgers and going to the movies.  And we're not talking those weird "Shot Food" burgers (see blog entry from last month), we're talking good, old-fashioned, artery-clogging, "Have It Your Way" goodness: McDonald's.  A colleague of ours knows someone who has some type of delivery route that runs from Sofia to Blago daily or nearly daily.  This colleague will, on occasion, order something from Sofia and have this delivery person bring it for a small fee.  Our colleague, let's call him "Burgmetheus" (from Greek mythology, the son of Titan who brought burgers to the humans) gave us the heads up that he was going to order some Micky Ds and asked if we wanted in. So, bim bang boom, Bob's your Uncle, Friday afternoon Burgmetheus delivers 8 luke warm double cheeseburgers.

Maybe you have in mind the best cheeseburger you ever had, and maybe you would not describe it as "luke warm." Or maybe you're going to tell us how terrible McDonald's food is or what not (yes, we saw the story about the 6 month old burger).  And maybe your idea of the best cheeseburger ever doesn't look like this.  Well, that may very well be.  But Anne and Mark have reached the conclusion that this cheeseburger (yes, the one pictured above) was the best food since manna fell from the sky.  Absence makes the heart grow fonder?  Um, well it certainly makes the stomach a bit more anxious to see an old friend.

After filling up on trans fats and other nastiness, Anne and Mark ventured out to the movies on Saturday afternoon.  This was our first movie at the theatre in Bulgaria.  The experience was not bad.  The theatre only has one screen and there are no previews, so you need to show up when your show is starting.  They do have 8 movies playing a day, though, so there is some variety.  Each gets one showing per day and they rotate showtimes, so you can go to the theatre at the same time every day for a week and not see the same film twice.

The seats were pre-assigned (the tickets had your row and seat printed on them).  The entire film was shown as produced, in English, with the only noticeable differences from how it would be in an American theatre being a high level of volume and Bulgarian subtitles.  Oh, and the theatre-going experience was much more affordable than in the US.  Two tickets cost 7 leva (about $5 - granted we went in the afternoon and paid matinee prices, but full price would have been 8 leva total).  The popcorn and drinks cost another 3-4 leva.

How is that the trademark of a popcorn company in Bulgaria?

Anyway, the film we chose was Social Network.  Quick review: Mark Zuckerberg (the guy who started Facebook) and Sean Parker (the guy who started Napster and worked on Facebook) are real jerks.  It's good that they know about computers and programming, because their social skills are quite suspect.  But I digress.  Anne and Mark both gave the movie a thumb's up (Go See It!).

Another movie currently playing, The Other Guys, is a comedy we saw before we left the U.S. last August.  So, some movies get here pretty quickly (a couple of weeks), while others can take a long while (months).  We are also told that American movies are generally popular, but comedies sometimes flop because the humor does not translate across the cultures.  Action movies do best.

And finally, today's adventure in parking:

We call this one "Jackknife in the Fog."  Notice the use of perpendicular angles and how the light is changing from day to dusk.  Notice how the driver has left the vehicle just slightly on the sidewalk and just slightly in the lane of traffic, effectively annoying both pedestrians and drivers, but not truly impeding either.  We have concluded that this driver is an artist and this is performance art, obviously symbolic of the inner struggle that this artist is enduring.  Or he's a jerk (maybe it's the Facebook guys).