Christkindlmarkt and The Third Man
Dec. 8th, 2007 06:56 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
kitewithfishSo, at the moment, my muse is not moving strongly within me, and I'm not feeling too much like writing. But, as my attempts to contact outside sources of entertainment have failed, I'm going to give it a whirl.
Since I last posted, I've bought my family some small group gifts, but dismissed the possibility of personal liquor-filled chocolates as untenable- the small bars were each about E4.50, and there are five members of my family, making it just a little more than I want to spend as a secondary gift for all of them. Also, while I was away, a mall has been built and opened in my home town, making it possible to shop for my family much more cheaply than here, with just about as much chance of dying in a car accident. The funds will be channeled somewhere more interesting than chocolates.
I spent yesterday wandering around the Rathaus Christkindlmarkt with Colleen and her visiting friend Kate, who is living in Paris right now. Once again, the situation of students in Paris is complicated by the strikes and the bizarreness of the Parisian mind-set regarding college, money, and any sort of change whatsoever. (Really, these people have been striking about as far as I can remember. They pay no tuition, so when things bother them, they just stop attending classes and make a big fuss over things. The university's drop-out rate in the first semester is something like 50%, and the place functions more like a community college than an institute of higher education. So, really, I think these people have nothing to complain about except being French. Which, mind you, is indeed a burden. )
Anyhoo, I spent more money than I should have, but had a great time just wandering around and looking at stuff. I finally figured out how the Punsch stands manage to keep out of bankruptcy with their nice little glass mugs that people just seems to wander around with- you put in a deposit when you buy the drink, so you essentially pay for the mug in advance. I was rather tempted to keep my mug, after discovering that I would have to pay for it, but the two Euros seemed to be more valuable than the mug, so I returned it. I also finally got one of the huge sausages in a wrap-around bun that I have so long lusted after. They are called hot dogs, but they are in fact nothing like the pathetic version of the thing we know. It is all lies.
Anyhoo, after wandering around the Christkindlmarkt, Colleen and Co were pooped, so they went home and me and Johanna went to see "The Third Man." The Burg Kino shows it every Friday in the original, and it's really a great movie. Speaking German makes it much better, actually, because while the main character does not speak German, everyone else around him does, so he looks like an idiot over and over again for not understanding the vaguest notion of what's going on. The minor German-speaking characters are really quite funny (like the landlady who wanders around in a blanket in the middle of the night: she honestly has some of the best lines in the movie, but if you don't speak German you just won't get it.) It's also clear that some of the "Germans" do not speak the language at all, but just got railroaded into saying the lines as best they could. At times it's very clear they don't know what the hell they're saying, and it makes it all better.
Also, I could recognize places in the movie! Not all of them, but there were definitely places that I've been- Zentralfriedhof was a major one (I've posted about that one- the lines of trees are exactly like they seem now), and the "sewer" that they chase Harry Lime through is actually the underground channel for the river Wien- I live quite close-by. On the other hand, however, it's shocking to see the signs of the Vienna I know mixed in which huge piles of rubble and broken stairs. I kind of want to do a tour of the city now, based on the scenes in the movie. However, it's not like the thing in "Mona Lisa Smile" where you know the place well enough to point out the fact that the characters entered the front door of one building, only to find themselves (completely unshocked by the bending of time and space) in the main hallway of another one. I'm not sure if it's just that the filming does not jump that way, or if I just don't know Vienna well enough.
Since I last posted, I've bought my family some small group gifts, but dismissed the possibility of personal liquor-filled chocolates as untenable- the small bars were each about E4.50, and there are five members of my family, making it just a little more than I want to spend as a secondary gift for all of them. Also, while I was away, a mall has been built and opened in my home town, making it possible to shop for my family much more cheaply than here, with just about as much chance of dying in a car accident. The funds will be channeled somewhere more interesting than chocolates.
I spent yesterday wandering around the Rathaus Christkindlmarkt with Colleen and her visiting friend Kate, who is living in Paris right now. Once again, the situation of students in Paris is complicated by the strikes and the bizarreness of the Parisian mind-set regarding college, money, and any sort of change whatsoever. (Really, these people have been striking about as far as I can remember. They pay no tuition, so when things bother them, they just stop attending classes and make a big fuss over things. The university's drop-out rate in the first semester is something like 50%, and the place functions more like a community college than an institute of higher education. So, really, I think these people have nothing to complain about except being French. Which, mind you, is indeed a burden. )
Anyhoo, I spent more money than I should have, but had a great time just wandering around and looking at stuff. I finally figured out how the Punsch stands manage to keep out of bankruptcy with their nice little glass mugs that people just seems to wander around with- you put in a deposit when you buy the drink, so you essentially pay for the mug in advance. I was rather tempted to keep my mug, after discovering that I would have to pay for it, but the two Euros seemed to be more valuable than the mug, so I returned it. I also finally got one of the huge sausages in a wrap-around bun that I have so long lusted after. They are called hot dogs, but they are in fact nothing like the pathetic version of the thing we know. It is all lies.
Anyhoo, after wandering around the Christkindlmarkt, Colleen and Co were pooped, so they went home and me and Johanna went to see "The Third Man." The Burg Kino shows it every Friday in the original, and it's really a great movie. Speaking German makes it much better, actually, because while the main character does not speak German, everyone else around him does, so he looks like an idiot over and over again for not understanding the vaguest notion of what's going on. The minor German-speaking characters are really quite funny (like the landlady who wanders around in a blanket in the middle of the night: she honestly has some of the best lines in the movie, but if you don't speak German you just won't get it.) It's also clear that some of the "Germans" do not speak the language at all, but just got railroaded into saying the lines as best they could. At times it's very clear they don't know what the hell they're saying, and it makes it all better.
Also, I could recognize places in the movie! Not all of them, but there were definitely places that I've been- Zentralfriedhof was a major one (I've posted about that one- the lines of trees are exactly like they seem now), and the "sewer" that they chase Harry Lime through is actually the underground channel for the river Wien- I live quite close-by. On the other hand, however, it's shocking to see the signs of the Vienna I know mixed in which huge piles of rubble and broken stairs. I kind of want to do a tour of the city now, based on the scenes in the movie. However, it's not like the thing in "Mona Lisa Smile" where you know the place well enough to point out the fact that the characters entered the front door of one building, only to find themselves (completely unshocked by the bending of time and space) in the main hallway of another one. I'm not sure if it's just that the filming does not jump that way, or if I just don't know Vienna well enough.
