Helsinki, running with popcorn

Brian and I arrived in Helsinki two days before Christmas with a very specific purpose. We had tickets to see Star Wars. We knew that in Finland the movie would be in original version. This is a phrase I never knew before moving to Germany, but original version means that the voices you hear are the actors' own. So Yoda sounds like Yoda, and the dialogue isn't dubbed. In our case, the movie had subtitles in both Finnish and Swedish. But first, the story of how we got there.

When checking into the hotel, we asked the bellman for directions to the kino (this is the semi-international word for movie theater). His eyes lit up. "Are you going to see Star Wars?" he asked. Brian nodded enthusiastically. Finns are not known for being chatty, but Star Wars is the universal language of males, at least those between the ages of 8 and 48. Talking sports works pretty well, but it hits a dead end in certain circles. Star Wars can't be beat. As our bellman, let's call him Tuukka (because I think that's a cool Finnish name) and Brian discussed the merits of the latest interplanetary struggles and the reach of various light sabers, I realized that Star Wars is also the way to loosen up a Finn's tongue. Probably vodka works too, but we didn't try that.

We quickly looked at the map from Tuukko, then headed out into the Helsinki night, in search of the aging Han Solo. We took a wrong turn. Then we headed back, made what seemed to be a right turn and asked directions. We started to follow the directions, but then found the movie theater, right inside a mall. We headed in and showed the blond teenage girl at the counter the tickets I had bought online. "Those are tickets," she said. Yes, thank you, I knew that. But at least she spoke some English. "You show them at the theater door." So Brian and I went down into this mostly dark shopping mall and found the concessions stand. A Pepsi and a bucket of popcorn later, we found the theater door and waited. And waited. No one was there and the show was set to start in 10 minutes. I went back to the teenage girl and expressed my concern. "That's ok," she said "someone will come in a few minutes." My Star Wars-loving husband was getting nervous.

 The teenage girl went on break and was replaced by a pimply blond teenage boy (of course they are blond; this is Scandanavia). He took a look at my tickets again and said "you're at the wrong theater." It turns out that Helsinki has a lot of shopping malls with movie theaters in them. So he gives me some directions and we're off running (literally) to the correct theater, in the correct mall, with 5 minutes to show time. Could we have just bought tickets to the later show, which was also showing at the 'wrong' theater? Sure, but that would have been too easy.

Instead, I was jogging through downtown Helsinki in the dark, clutching a bucket of movie popcorn. We made it, panting, to the correct theater. "Don't worry," says the pimply blond boy who scans our tickets at the door, "there are still 5 minutes of previews. As we sank into our seats and took off our coats, I realized that our popcorn bucket was obviously not from this theater. Thank goodness for the Finns - nobody said anything.