parasitegirl | Day 1: Like Wisconsin

Day 1: Dussledorf, Germany.

Khalida and I both slept in. I was exhausted from travel. She and Queenie had just finished up their multi-day Bellydance Bootcamp.

My first European workshop was a day away.

On our free day, Khalida and I thought we might do a bit of sight-seeing and take goofy pictures at a location where three countries meet…with wings. She packed the wings in the car.

We then proceeded to having a long lunch, polishing off a bottle of wine and talking. NO SIGHTS WERE SEEN. We then continued to be lazy and see the latest Batman movie that night. Her husband would join us and drive.

On most of the drives I was taken on by Khalida or her husband, we crossed into other countries. I know we went to Belgium on this ride. This event is less eventful than driving into a new state in America and the signs are more subtle.

In the car my impression of Germany was formed: The highways look like Wisconsin highways with more hills and no billboards.

All the more reason to go back…to actually sight see. I saw very little of Europe in my week there.

By the time we got to the cinema (early to get some food and drink) I started experiencing culture shock. For the first few days I was utterly weirded out by packs of white people. Not kidding. Do you know how long it’s been since I was in a foreign country where I didn’t look like Teh Foreigner? Probably not since Paris in…2004? 2005? Added to this was language…Outside of America, I’m not accustomed to waiters, workers, or staff talking to me like they think I understand. Usually waiters see me and start scanning the table for the most Asian-ish person to address comments towards.

Also adding to the culture shock was that the bar we went by the cinema…it could have been anywhere in downtown Madison. It looked like the inside of The Great Dane but with faux B&W pictures of miners on the walls.

The Dark Knight Rises.

By the time we got there the cinema was well packed and we had to sit in the second row.

OMG, there were no trailers! SWEEEET.

I don’t feel the need to comment on the movie itself. I had fun. It also made me realize how much DC universe lore I’ve absorbed over the years (Thank you, Drew, you’re probably the biggest reason for this). No spoilers…but the things that would be regarded as spoilers were things I saw coming because I am geekier than I thought and there were visual hats tipped to geeks of my level and greater.

What I do want to comment on is one moment at the theater:

Right when Batman just reappeared on the Gotham scene, cars were rushing, bad dudes were being chased, and the shit was about to get real; the screen went blank and the lights came on.

I emitted an involuntary scream/grunt. I assumed that this was a technical difficulty, an annoying glitch of some sort. Being American, I looked around the theater for other people to start swearing, groaning, and perhaps even throwing snacks at the screen. No one was reacting like I did or like My People. Folks were talking, getting up and going places…at which point the penny dropped. I turned to Khalida and asked, “Do your movies have….INTERMISSIONS?”

Yes, They often do.

Now, as much as I loathe having to pee mid-way through a film and nervously waiting for a slow point…being RIPPED out of a scene/ of a movie in progress / the very act of suspended disbelief you (somewhat) enter in a cinema, struck me as horrible, UNAMERICAN, and disturbing. Deeply troubling.

I’ve thought about this more than is healthy since then. I’ve started to think that maybe an intermission is permissible, but there needs be a soft cue that it is coming and it needs to be between scenes…maybe.

Toward the end of intermission I noticed the young boys in front of me looking back oddly, but I thought it was my loud English. I also observed a package of potato chips between the first row and the screen. Only later did Khalida tell me that my scream caused the boy in front of me to fumble-toss his snacks forward.

We returned back to home base. I slept.

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