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Yulya and Tanya Go to Berlin

      The girls became friends at Moscow Teachers Training University, Foreign Languages Department. Although they’d been learning German for a year already they could hardly speak it. Thus, the ladies decided to spend their summer holidays together and brush up their German. The trio believed the fastest and surest way to learn the language was to stay in the country where the very language was spoken. That was their recipe and they felt a strong urge to check whether that was really the case. What they had to do was to mix the following ingredients: A) socialize with native speakers, B) stay open to communication, where making mistakes was not only inevitable but also contact-finding and amusing, C) get acquainted with the culture and compare it with your own and D) have fun obviously. If you followed the instructions correctly, you would master the language pretty fast. Bon appetit!

      Back to Moscow Vnukovo airport.

      The blonde-haired Katya, a tall, slender girl was in her hyper mood waving happily b’bye with her long palm at her parents. Her Mum and Dad were masters of a farewell scene with a real pep talk of be careful here and there spiced up with lots of examples from newspapers, books, news and movies of young ladies who go on adventures abroad and end up deceived serving foreign pimps abroad as whores. Every time they saw her off they would spill on her the same stories. They wanted to give her all the opportunity in the world but at the same time protect her, as she was an only child, as her Mum had been advised against any more children due to her catastrofically bad eyesight.

      Katya didn’t want to let down her worrying parents and like a really good-natured daughter she pretended to listen to them with great attention. To herself though she was thinking if she took to these horror stories she would spend the rest of her life in Moscow being afraid of the rest of the world. Or she might even consider going back to her home town, where there were only about one hundred thousand people compared to Moscow official thirteen million, which might appear to be quite a deserted place, calm and peaceful, with less crime, less crooks and tourists. Instead Katya chose to trust in good. And the good would take care of her. She cherished the notion of thinking positively in order to attract it in her life. That was her faith.

      She was so excited to escape. Freedom was about to come! No irritating small laws of parents, teachers, elderly people to obey, at least for the time being! You could forget all about ‘Don’t swear! Don’t come home late! Don’t get drunk! Don’t mess up with guys till you’ve graduated from the university!’ Although in the back of her mind she knew being alert would do no harm obviously. Shit happens. No one is ensured against crooks.

      Red-haired, miniature Yulya with her outstanding lips and pretty-freckled-face was hugging her Mum and Dad telling them in her high-pitched voice not to worry. Having never flown in a plane, they were really worried about the flight, more than Yulya herself. While the latter was just thinking of a new experience with an excitement of discovering a new world and new feelings, her parents had these terrible pictures in their heads of plane crushes they’d seen so often on TV. On seeing her Mum’s wet eyes and Dad’s absent look Yulya was obliged to quote the three Musketeers saying ‘All for one and one for all’, squeeze her Mummy hard and cheek kiss her.

      ‘I’ll be very prudent, Pa, I promise,’ she whispered in her Dad’s ear. After all it wasn’t like going alone, but with very, very good friends of hers. They were like her elder sister – very care-taking.

      On her own stood dark-haired Tanya with a thick fringe of hers which provoked her friends to call her just Fringe. She was chewing a gum, eyeing the ceiling and looked as if she were somewhat irritated with her friends whose parents were such Mummies and Daddies as if their kids were leaving for a war. She handled her b’bye procedure at home telling her Mum not to worry as she was capable to get to the airport on her own. She didn’t need that puppy-love scene performed at the airport.

      Since the age of sixteen Tanya had been making clear to her Mum that she’d grown up. Fringe began to feel her growing independence when she started earning her own, though little, money by typing texts for some publishing house. With her own money she could indulge in her own wishes without begging her Mum to give her some cash. That was the turning point for her newly-acquired phrase she threw whenever her Mum was about to lecture her, with a slight note of irritation Tanya would say, ‘I’ll decide by myself what to do with my life, I’m big enough, Mum.’

      Maybe it was not only her own money that made her rely only on herself as a teenager.

      She became aware that life was not only honey and sugar at the age of twelve, the personal experience mutated through a psychological trauma into the secret she’d kept to herself in the lowest drawer of her memory.

      Plus, at the age of fourteen she witnessed her Dad get himself utterly drunk and bit up her Mum. In panic Fringe called an ambulance to take her Mum to hospital where the latter spent a week. That week Tanya spent alone with her beast Dad home. Fringe was afraid he might perform same beating act on her, so she always kept a pocket knife on her for defense, even though she wasn’t quite sure she could raise a hand on her own Dad. Surprisingly, she was relieved to observe his permissive beating was only directed on his wife. The attitude to his daughter didn’t alter. Nevertheless, she couldn’t forgive him for her Mum’s beating.

      When her Mum was released from the hospital Fringe told her she didn’t want to live with her Dad and she would run away if they kept on living together. Mum replied she needed time to think.

      When Mama Irina was beaten one more time, she filed for a divorce and arranged staying at her sister’s place where the latter lived with a daughter of hers. Two sisters and cousins were to endure a little inconvenience of being packed like sardines in a one-room apartment during the process of changing the beating husband’s three-room apartment to two one-room apartments. As a matter of fact, Tanya and her cousin, Anya, became quite close at that time and were determined to keep their friendship after their inevitable separation. Soon the exchange was performed. The sisters and their daughters were back to living apart.

      Since then Fringe lived in a one-room apartment with her Mum. Tanya believed she was deprived of her private room only temporarily. She valued that she and her Mum resided in a safe and non-violent place now.

      Maybe because of all the family cataclysms Fringe looked older and wiser than her besties. It was her eyes that could flicker a sullen twinge at times. In fact she was even a year younger. Besides her looks were just super womanly as she was shaped like the yummiest donut on earth. Such an appearance was due to her big heavy breasts which she only used to curse when she ran in PE classes – so dangly and heavy they were that they even hurt. But in all other cases Tanya was extremely proud of them. The pride that was strengthening with each lustful male stare or an envious female glare.

      Finally the girls lost the glimpse of their parents. If they could’ve screamed without frightening the airport staff, they would’ve gladly done it. Instead Katya began singing as if an opera singer ‘Parents, see you soooooon and freedom, weeee are cooooming!’

      Yulya just made a silly-goose dance and jumped forward to the pass control as if she were a ballerina. Pretending to be embarrassed Tanya said to the security guy, ‘I AM NOT WITH THEM!’ and rolled her eyes up.

      Finally Moscow Duty Free was offering its services to them: Vodka or Tequila would help them celebrate their soon arrival. They chose a huge chocolate bar and Tequila Silver for their dinner in Berlin.

      ‘Shall we take one or two ciggie cartons?’ Tanya was referring to Yulya with a mocking seriousness.

      While Tanya adored the act of smoking in general and treated it as a means of thinking, relaxation and meditation, Red-haired didn’t much care about inhaling and exhaling the smoke, she just did it to keep a company, because everybody did it, so she never felt real satisfaction in the act. Her elder sister smoked too, but her parents didn’t know Yulya was smoking. They still treated her as their little one. And Red-haired was trying to preserve the corresponding behaviour of an ignorant, innocent girl. When they felt the cigarette smell around her, she would always say it was the university

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