Three days ago, one of my Bulgarian readers sent me a <a href="http://suzercatel.net/?p=579" target="_blank">link to this movie</a>--East Meets Berrry West. In his email he wrote only this: An independent movie about a vacation in Bulgaria.  Okay.

I followed the link.

Then it stood open in a sea of my open tabs for almost 24 hours.  Before I started watching.

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What was I thinking?!

Needless to say, 25 minutes into the movie I was dying laughing. The worst part is that I am still not done watching because I've been too busy with school. I've been trying not to let myself get sidetracked. Maybe tonight.

So far?

Well, the main character an skinny Irish tourist with stringy hair makes me totally uncomfortable as he's navigating Bulgarian culture. But it's sort of a good uncomfortable the kind that you can laugh about, recognize a little bit of yourself in him and generally feel embarrassed for him.

He's trying to get from the capitol to Varna--but he's climbed on the wrong bus. Of course.

At the same time there's the Bulgarian Mafia who speak English. They are all wearing pretty fantastic suits. The ringleader speaks such heavily accented English that he subtitles. Only his subtitles are pretty un-helpful because his strange accent is written out.  Ultimately, this is pretty funny but a little hard to catch on to, to start with.

The highlight in my mind thus far in are the singing and dancing babas. They are wearing traditional costume and dancing for a table of old men also in traditional costume and the skinny Irish foreigner is smack-dab in the middle of the table drinking rakiya after rikiya.

I'd guess that I am about 1/3 of the way in but already it's clear that it's the absurdity of the whole situation that makes the film so funny. Oh and the clash of cultural stereotypes.

In real life, I would clearly hate Berry West but in this film he's such a caricature of the Western tourist looking for a cheep flight, even less expensive alcohol and plenty of sand that he's funny.

Anyhow, check out the film. It's worth it.