EuroLife Day 32

Today I am proud to report that the birds and I are getting along much better than we were when I last wrote. Yesterday morning they seemed to be convinced that the feeder was a trap, which made for some pretty entertaining antics. One brave bird at a time, they would land in a nearby branch, look at the feeder, fly to it, touch it, and immediately take off...this went on for quite a while. By this morning they seem to have decided that all was well. So here is a better picture of the Great T. It's still not fantastic because, for now, the flash really scares them...and we're working on overcoming those "the feeder's a trap" fears. Hopefully, in time, they'll either stop being afraid of the flash or the sun will come out. (Surely, one of these days, the sun must make an appearance...wouldn't you think?)

They are very cute birds. From what I can tell, we have a big group of the Great Tit and one Blue Tit who likes to hang out with them. I keep looking for a second, but I really think there's only one so far. I'm hoping that we get some more birds as the weather gets colder. They have Green Finches around here, and I'd like to see one of those.

OK. Apparently not everybody thinks that birds are as cool as I do, so I'll turn my attention to something new: trying to watch a movie here in Jena. We have given up on joining the local video rental service. There seems only to be the one, and it is self-service. Nobody mans the store, you just come and go with a membership card. But you have to be a member to get into the store. And you can't become a member until you talk to someone who works there. Are you beginning to see the problem? There must be some trick we don't know, but it's worth mentioning that we asked a German friend and he didn't know it either.

The movie theaters are very nice inside, and they show both German movies and American movies dubbed in German. (We have now seen Ratatouille and The Murder of Jesse James by the Cowardly Bob Ford, both in German., but also a funny German movie called Stellungswechsel.) They sell beer in the theaters, and the seats are super comfy and fancy. The show times, on the other hand, are really rather tricky. Some movies are shown every day. Lots of them are shown on something like the following schedule: Monday at 5, Wednesday at 1, Saturday at 7.

We haven't yet found anything that publishes the showtimes. I thought I found a website with the listings yesterday, but when I followed the link it said (translated here) "Please send us an email with "Jena showtimes" in the subject, and we'll email you todays schedule." I sent an email, but no schedule followed. So, we tend to just go and hope that they'll be something watchable. This is how we ended up watching the Jesse James movie last night. Was it any good? Beats me. I barely understood a word!

Here's one more random photo from our walk last weekend. Some of you might recognize the man with the backpack. The plan is to tackle a new mountain this weekend!