Confession of a Toastmaster - Vladimir Shatakishvili Nabokov Prize Library

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Greece. We spent time perfectly: excursions, negotiations with potential investors, visiting expensive stores and restaurants. We even managed to stay in two hotels. We stayed the first three days in a usual, but very cozy Alpha (near the venue of the negotiations), and when we were walking and visiting brand stores on the Maximilianstrasse, one of the most expensive and famous streets, we came across the five-star Vier Jahreszeiten Kempinski and moved there for the rest two days, despite the exorbitant prices. By tradition, we began our tour around the pubs of Munich with Hofbräuhaus, where beer and everything else, served to it, were of the highest quality. During those days, spent in the capital of Bavaria, we were able to visit a lot of interesting restaurants, pubs and other bawdy places with different cuisines: Italian, Greek, Asian, Oriental, French. Unfortunately, I did not record the specific places of our adventures, although, I still remember some of them: restaurant «Zum Augustiner» at the Neuhauserstrasse, restaurant «Leopold», restaurant «Königshof», Italian restaurant «Aquarelle». Sadly, I do not remember the name of an excellent Spanish restaurant, but I remember «Bangkok House» with Thai cuisine. If we remember our forays into the best restaurants in Munich, it should be noted that the city has cuisines from all five continents. Iranian, Turkish, Japanese, Vietnamese, Chinese, Greek cafes and restaurants are everywhere. And yet, the great German beer remains the main in all of these places. For all my trips, for all my visits to different restaurants, I had never even thought to drink wine, vodka, brandy, whiskey, champagne… Beer, beer and only beer should be consumed when in Munich. There are closer cities and countries for other drinks…

      I remembered another trip to the capital of Bavaria. It was only a month and a half later, at the end of June 2007, when I began to prepare for the trip. My friend Sergey with his business partners Valery and Igor were to fly to Munich from Barcelona, where they participated in some sort of congress. The flight from Barcelona was in the evening, so I asked my German friends and colleagues to meet the plane together. The thing was the following: a huge airport of Munich is difficult to explore after a few visits, especially with a complete lack of knowledge of the German language (I was constantly fighting with it at the Institute, as the second language, after English, was German. I even transferred to the extramural department at the fourth year, where it was enough to know one language). It was a whole city with separate buildings for departure and arrival of flights. Certainly, I did not visit all the airports in the world, but I was sure that the airport of Munich in its size was not inferior to the airports in Milan and Bangkok, where I happened to be and to be surprised at their size as well. We successfully met the guys and went by two cars to the hotel, where they had booked rooms, being in Moscow. Stingy and prudent Germans were surprised by the scale of the arrived guests: they stayed in one of the most prestigious and expensive (if not the most expensive) hotels of the city – Bayerischer Hof. Certainly, it was a five-star hotel. We had dinner at some Greek restaurant that was located on the second floor of a huge shopping mall, halfway between my modest Alpha and their hotel. The scope of the landed «Russian troops» struck the receiving party, the first round of negotiations was held during more than a hearty lunch. The table was just littered with all sorts of seafood. I had never seen such a number of sea creatures that had befallen us. I think that the «natives» also were not used to such frills. Their Russian-speaking representative only had time to make orders to the waiters, who were trying to please us in every way. When one of the arrived «Russian heroes» paid a substantial bill and left a tip, commensurate with a weekly salary, the waiters actually came out to see us off on the street. There, in the west, everybody were used to pay for themselves, but for us, this situation was alien. In our understanding, it was some sort of greediness.

      Next day presaged a lot of interesting: negotiations with bankers, sightseeing around the city, shopping and visiting the most important pubs. The first misfire happened this morning during the visit to the business partners. These days, there was almost forty-degree heat. When we entered the building we preferred to take the elevator to the third floor. We squeezed in it somehow and pressed the button of the desired floor. The doors closed, and the elevator grunted somehow and got stuck. All efforts to start it were futile. The safety service of the elevators immediately got involved in the negotiations with us, but my attempts to explain something in English were ignored. No one knew their native German language. We felt «painful and funny», in a word – uncomfortable, hot, and after a few minutes of waiting and misunderstanding, even creepy. One of the Moscow heroes, who stood closest to the door, managed to break it, freeing us. What did we see, having escaped from the grip of the German elevator? The inscription in huge numbers – 360 kg (the limit and warning for «very bad ones»). We only had to do one simple arithmetic operation, calculating our total weight: 135+125+115+95 (my weight) = 470 kg. The German people were meticulous and punctual, and such an overload did not work for them. We simply behaved like fools. However, then we were laughing for a long time. According to general opinion, I had the creepiest facial expression, although, they also had a «pale appearance», because no one wanted to suffocate in a stuffy elevator. Negotiations somehow went wrong, our partners were very worried, either due to the damaged elevator, or, we would like to think, worrying about the guests subjected to the test. The solution was found quickly, as we had not yet managed to visit Hofräuhaus. Having taken a Russian-speaking «native» with us, we went to celebrate the «liberation from captivity». In the famous pub, we had a real «nosh-up». We drank an incredible amount of the most famous beer. We ordered so many dishes that one could easily feed another ten people. It was not according to the scenario, but according to the accident that our «translator» was not as strong as the Russian heroes. He was «loaded» and «loaded», specifically setting the conversation in the direction of the future financial mazes. The poor fellow promised so much that the half of it would be enough for us… In the end, being «completely smashed», he was evacuated home by the taxi. My guests from Moscow let themselves go. Now, I became the object of their practical jokes and banter, although, Sergey had introduced me as his former «General Director», which was not quite true. When they got convinced that it was impossible to make me drunk with beer, then they conceived another, tricky ways of jokes. To be honest, in the first days, both of them seemed to me to be some tramps, not corresponding to the status of Sergey, who had already reached the highest heights in business and political life of the North Caucasian region. But, as it turned out, I made a big mistake. Only later, I learned that the young (about forty years old), funny and cheerful new buddies were very serious and wealthy people. Sometimes, their names appeared in the famous lists of the world famous Forbes magazine. Therefore, before starting to write about the meetings that took place not only in Germany, I asked Sergey if it was possible to mention the names of the heroes of this story. My friend asked not to use real last names not only of the guests from Moscow, but his too. I know nothing about their present positions, only that they are already very high…

      So, we continue the «gluttony» in the most famous pub in the world. When I cited statistics on live weight crammed into the elevator, on the previous pages, the first, most impressive numbers belong to my new friends. I repeatedly wrote about the method of determining the amount of alcohol drunk by the person: any kind of alcoholic beverages by simple mathematical operations is equal to 96° alcohol and is divided by the weight of the human body. So go now and compete with them for they already have a head start of at least 30 %. I was once again asked to tell about the beer putsch of 1923 (8–9 November). Although, 16 people were killed, the authorities graciously treated Hitler and his supporters. They imprisoned them for only nine months, but were able to do away with fascism. He could rot in prison as a dangerous political criminal, he could be expelled from Germany as an undesirable alien, with no permission to return. The history of German Nazism would have been over at that point, as the government could have easily suppressed it…

      I told them about another famous visitor of Hofbräuhaus, living for months in the rooms of this building, and also a big fan of local beer. His name was no less famous – Karl Marx – the founder of Marxism. His friend and collaborator Friedrich Engels, as a more rich and wealthy man, was tolerant to the whims of his colleague. When visiting the Bavarian capital, he paid debts and prolonged the residence of his friend in the then existing rooms of the famous building.

      Our prolonged lunch could gradually develop into a dinner, but no energy was left to sit at the table. We still planned to go shopping for the guests, leaving in two days, who wanted to buy gifts for the loved ones. If you walk across from the pub literally three hundred metres,

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