For us date nights are scheduled for Friday or Saturday nights, except in Germany. Finding an English movie on the big screen on weekend evenings can be tricky. We’ve encountered this many times; we plan for a Friday (or Saturday) evening dinner and a show. First it’s the restaurant search and reservations. Then comes finding and picking the movie in the local theater. This is often when we run into trouble. They have many, if not all, Hollywood films on the big screen but most of the time they are dubbed in German. For instance, The Iron Lady. The first few weeks it was released in United States, it played in Germany, dubbed. Then when it was nominated for the Oscar they scheduled some shows in English. Thankfully we were able to catch it in English. (We both found it just average. Meryl Streep’s acting is spot on however the movie's plot didn’t grab our interest.) Another example is The Descendants. I hadn’t heard of this movie until the Oscar nomination so I looked for it in the theater. They were playing it in German as well as English. Unfortunately, they played the original version for only 2 weeks before and during the Oscars. We missed it. I admit, this is our fault for not scheduling a time to see it but I am also frustrated they played the original movie for only 2 weeks.
The other concern is films in English are shown at peculiar times. When searching online, we’ve seen showings at 11am or 2pm on a weekday. This is wonderful for the afternoon or evening workers however since he works and I’ve had German classes until now, it’s hard to catch a movie, unless it’s evenings or weekends.
With that out of the way there are some things that we really appreciate about the theater here. One, the movie theater in the Altstadt is enormous with many big screens and many movies (German and foreign) showing. Second, to see a movie one must make reservations by phone or online for a seat. This means, we can reserve exactly the seats we want (unless taken) for the movie. Then 30 minutes prior to the show, we pay and get our tickets with seat information. This makes things much easier to get good seats in advance, as opposed to the American way, where if you’re late you’re shit out of luck. The catch is if you reserve and don’t show 15 minutes before the movie begins, your seats are sold to someone else. This is definitely a foreign concept but we like it. Due to this, we’ve always had great seats because we picked them in advance. Third, most movie theaters in the city have 5 Euro movie days on Monday & Tuesday. Any movie at any time is 5 Euros. Who doesn’t love a discount? And finally, for those sweet popcorn lovers the theaters here offer salty popcorn as well as sweet. Salzig oder Süß?
Salzig, immer.
The other concern is films in English are shown at peculiar times. When searching online, we’ve seen showings at 11am or 2pm on a weekday. This is wonderful for the afternoon or evening workers however since he works and I’ve had German classes until now, it’s hard to catch a movie, unless it’s evenings or weekends.
With that out of the way there are some things that we really appreciate about the theater here. One, the movie theater in the Altstadt is enormous with many big screens and many movies (German and foreign) showing. Second, to see a movie one must make reservations by phone or online for a seat. This means, we can reserve exactly the seats we want (unless taken) for the movie. Then 30 minutes prior to the show, we pay and get our tickets with seat information. This makes things much easier to get good seats in advance, as opposed to the American way, where if you’re late you’re shit out of luck. The catch is if you reserve and don’t show 15 minutes before the movie begins, your seats are sold to someone else. This is definitely a foreign concept but we like it. Due to this, we’ve always had great seats because we picked them in advance. Third, most movie theaters in the city have 5 Euro movie days on Monday & Tuesday. Any movie at any time is 5 Euros. Who doesn’t love a discount? And finally, for those sweet popcorn lovers the theaters here offer salty popcorn as well as sweet. Salzig oder Süß?
Salzig, immer.
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