A Fantastic (Four) Day

Today, we had our first run-in with bureaucracy. We showed up at the bank for our appointment to open an account, only to discover that they wanted us to have an extra proof of lodgings (a bill in our airbnb host’s name) as well as both of our birth certificates. I left feeling somewhat defeated, but I think that can partially be blamed on the weather. It was overcast and dreary today, and that always makes me feel pretty down.

I was convinced that our host was going to tell us to pound sand with all of our requests, but he was like “Sure, no problem, I’ll put it in your mailbox.”

I guess maybe he’s more used to bureaucracy than we are…

Speaking of our mailbox, we have a mailbox here! I don’t know why this makes me feel like we’ve really made it, but it does.

If you’d like to send us some mail, please DM me for the address. Just be aware that I’m heading back to the US on September 12th. Kristian and Lilian will (hopefully) be moving to a new apartment around that time as well.

Lilian and I went to the movies tonight. We saw the Fantastic 4, which they wanted to see before we moved. We never found the time to go, so I was happy to find a nearby theater that was still showing it. I was terrified that we were going to show up and the whole thing was going to be dubbed. After some googling, I learned the “VOSTF” (or VOSTFR) means “version originale sous-titres français.” AKA, I still get to hear Pedro Pascal’s voice but there will be French subtitles.

I was hyped about the fact that we could just jump on the metro and a tram to go see a movie, but Lilian was unimpressed. I guess they’re just used to me doing all of the driving. :p

The movie theater is in the big local mall, so we grabbed dinner at the food court. Someday I will shut up about the food here… but that day is not today. Even fast food here is amazing.

We went to a “Berliner Das Original” which, despite having the word “Das” right there in the name, has zero restaurants in Germany. They do, however, have one on Madagascar (I would like to hear the story behind that franchise location). They also have one in Strasbourg, which I suppose is as close to Germany as you get in France (the two countries have a fun history of fighting over it).

I got mine with falafel. Or, should I say, “falafel” because it was soft and made out of zucchini, with nary a chickpea to be found. This is me not complaining, however, because it was absolutely delicious. The tzatziki was on point and there were real vegetables and even pomegranate in it.

The guy working the snack bar at the movie theater was the first person I’ve encountered who legit seemed annoyed by my broken French. Probably because my strategy of “get the gist of what they’re saying and then smile and nod” doesn’t work when you have to specify if you want the salty popcorn or the sweet popcorn (we went with salty, based on the errant kernels that made it into our bag of popcorn, we should have gone with sweet). But, hey, we made it through.

The movie was decent by Marvel standards. I loved the world-building aspect of a planet where everyone dresses like it’s the 1950s, but they have technology that we can only dream about. Very Jetsons.

It felt nice to do something that felt so normal for us. The popcorn might come in different flavors, but movie theaters tend to be the same wherever you go. It reminded me of taking my little siblings to the see the Hulk and T3: Terminator movies when we were in Chile eons ago. I guess Lilian didn’t feel the same, however, because we had the following exchange.

Me: Didn’t that feel so normal? We could have been at any theater in the US!
Lilian: Ummm, the subtitles were in FRENCH

In case you were wondering, the French translate “It’s Clobbering Time!” to “Ça va chauffer!”

We sortof have a long weekend to look forward to, although Lilian has school orientation on Monday (the French celebrate Labor Day on May Day). Speaking of which, we toured their school yesterday! Kristian and I had already seen most of it on our scouting trip back in April, but Lilian was PSYCHED to see everything. The rock wall was a huge draw, as well as the fact that they have a drama club and the teachers organize periodic music performances by the students.

They’re still super nervous about [waves arms] all of this, but feeling much better after meeting some of the administrators (who were just lovely), seeing the school in person (the lack of florescent lights was a surprising selling point), and having the time to get used to things.

We took the metro and a tram to get there. Lilian loves the trams with vinyl wraps on them and was super excited that we got to ride one on the way back from filling out paperwork. Even if they are a lot darker on the inside.

At some point, quotidien activities like riding trams will not seem so exciting. But, once again, today is not that day.