#3- Movies and Phones

Hey folks, Sean here. So how about I start off today by talking about cell phones here. There are 3 cell phone companies here. Orange and T-Mobile are the 2 that pretty much own the market. Then there is a fairly new company called O2. As far as I can see, Orange and T-Mobile are pretty much the same as phone companies at home. They charge the same monthly fee for some amount of minutes. There is also a contract involved in order for customers to buy a cheap phone. It says Verizon all over it. I’ve always hated paying a monthly fee for some amount of minutes that sometimes I don’t even use, and I’ve never been a fan of being locked into a contract. So I decided to sign up for O2.

They have a program where you only pay for what you use. I know Verizon has a program similar to this but the difference is that you have to pay $2.99 per day that you actually use the phone with Verizon. With O2, you don’t. You pay for the minutes that you call. If someone calls me and I answer, I don’t pay anything. I only have to pay for calls going out from my phone. Since most people are calling me so far, my bill is very cheap. I bought a new Sony Ericsson phone which I really like. I guess there is really nothing that special for me to say about it, but I like it a lot. That could also be because I had such a bad experience the past couple years with phones. Never again Motorola!!!One of the first things I wanted to do when I got here of course, was to go to the movies. Palace Cinemas to be exact. It doesn’t matter where I am in the world, I gotta have my movies! The first movie I watched here was Mama Mia. This movie came out here a few weeks after it was released in the states. The more popular movies either come out at the same time, or very close to it. Other less popular movies can come out a lot later. Zohan came out only a few weeks before the release of the dvd back home! A movie like Quantum of Solace is going to come out the same week. Movies are released on Thursdays here rather than Fridays. You will also not find any movie times starting after 10:00 pm which is a negative if you ask me. I miss going to those midnight movies.

But to add a positive, you can reserve your tickets and SEATS online here. It is not a requirement to buy the tickets online. You can buy the tickets online or just reserve your seats. They actually have a seating chart online and you can see which seats are already reserved or sold. After you reserve a seat, you have to be present at the ticket counter 30 minutes before show time, or they could sell your seats. The good thing about it is that you don’t have to show up an hour early to MAYBE get a good seat. After you pick up your tickets, you know you have seats and no one else can take them. So then you can feel free to go shopping in the mall or whatever, and you can go in the theatre when you choose.

All children’s films are dubbed in the Slovak language. All other movies have subtitles which are either in the Slovak or Czech languages. Deni tells me that the subtitles are not translated that well and sometimes they say something completely different. I would imagine that some movies, especially comedies, would have to be this way in order for the people to find it funny. Deni can’t wait for Madagascar 2. She loves the first movie so much she watched it 2 days in a row last week.

Ok so now I’ve made it to just before September. Next time I’ll tell you about the neat little festival that went to in late August.