Going to movies is fun, right? Right. But chances are that if you are going to movies on a weekend, at least one of the following is true:

• You have nothing better to do.�
• You got too plastered the night before, so you are too tired to party.
• You have a date.

While, the last excuse is somewhat a solid one, the first two are really lame: you should always have something better to do and everyone knows that the best cure for a hungover is drinking.�

Unfortunately, last Friday night I was one of these lame people, who had nothing better to do, and I decided to joined a group of my coworkers for a movie night out. Turns out, just like any other thing in Zurich,�movie theater experience is a different kind of animal here.

Well first of all, if you were born and raised in Antarctica and know nothing about Switzerland, English is not the official language here. Consequently, most of the films in the movie theaters here are dubbed in German. However, if you look hard enough, you might get lucky and come across a screening in English with German subtitles. At least that’s what happened to one of my buddies at work, who invited me out. The film of his choice was �’Bedtime Stories’ starring Adam Sandler. While the movie seemed to be very much family-oriented, I’m a big fan of Adam Sandler, so I decided to give it a shot.

So here we are, on our way to Abaton movie theater on Friday night. We take a tram there – everything seems pretty regular. We arrive 20 minutes later to a very modern looking building with huge windows. I get excited for a second, but then in a corner of my eye I notices a nearby bar, where the night crawling population of Zurich is slowly preparing for their invasion into the beautiful land of drunkness and�debauchery. I try to be strong and look away. We walk into the building…

My jaw drops right there. Ticket price -�18CHF or 20 CAN. Damn…

My coworkers are already buying tickets, so it’s too late to back out. I give a last glance to the bar outside and with sadness walk up to the ticketing booth. As soon as I pay, I start feeling like it was not worth it. Then, it gets worse. We finally make it to the 4th floor to our cinema and we freeze in disbelieve. In front of us is the�tiniest little room. You those seats in the picture above. That’s it!!! 5 row, 6 seats each. Is that what I’m paying 18 franks for???

Luckily, our seats are in the middle of the third row. What a relief… See, one good thing is that European movie theaters work like regular theaters, when it comes down to ticketing. Ergo, you have a directly assigned seat.�

Moreover, ticketing is not the only similarity. There is also a half way intermission. You are sitting there enjoying the flick and bam! The screen simply turns of in the middle of a scene. Pee-pee time everybody!

Verdict: Hollywood movies in non�Hollywood style – welcome to Zurich