I talked Eddie into going to see the Pirates of the Caribbean part 11 Saturday night. She was leery about the movie but even more leery that we could get into a movie on a Friday night.
Sure enough, when we arrived 30 minutes before the show it was sold out. Shoot.
I was stiffening with disappointment when a man walked up and offered us two tickets. I've never heard of scalping a movie. How much, we asked. I thought he said 50 km.
That's 10 times the price of a movie, no way, I said.
No no, 15 km he said.
That's 3 times the price of a move, no way, I said.
No no, 15 km for both tickets, he said.
Are they real? Eddie wanted to know. The scalper offered them to me so I could ask the guy in the ticket booth. He pronounced them real and we bought them.
Jobs are so scare here that people are creative about making money. This guy arrived early enough to buy up a bunch of tickets and then sold them just next to the ticket booth for a fraction more that represented his profit. I felt bad I didn't pay more when I realized that. I could have gone double the price of a movie.
In the summer of 2012, I'm back in Sarajevo working with people who are good journalists and after all this time also good friends. My language skills are no better, alas, but I hang out with natives and internationals in the know. So I'm planning in this space to tell Bosnian stories to American readers, with my Bosnian friends free to call me out on errors or wrong headed interpretations. This is a fascinating area of the world and these are interesting times.
Subscribe To the blog
Posts
Comments
No comments:
Post a Comment