Скачать книгу

alright, we’re taking only one carton. One carton should be quite enough for a month. Katya, you should become a damn health coach,’ uttered Tatyana in a fake irritation. And so their trip began.

      Berlin. Everything seemed different. Even the air seemed different. The smell of bread and freshly-baked buns greeted them at the airport. In the train from the airport they heard a couple speaking Russian, who appeared to be living in Berlin for a long time already. Katya was holding a note with the address they were to live at and asked if, by any chance, they knew the street.

      The couple had a look at the address and uttered, ‘Nope. But we’ll help you to find out when we are at the railway station.’

      No one seemed to know where the street was.

      ‘Look, there’s a city map,’ there came Tanya’s voice.

      No such street to be found. The map was enormous. Berlin seemed to be as big as Moscow. Taxi-drivers should know! Beige Mercedes taxis were lining up for their clients. Everyone was asking what district the street was in. But the girls had no idea. No idea the first driver had as well. What about the second one? Alright, at least he managed to find the street on his map. Quite easy to find if one knew that it was in Charlottenburg-Wilmesdorf, West Berlin. And the happy girls put their luggage in the trunk; gave the Russian couple a Russian chocolate bar Alyonka and got into the car with a relief. Why it was such a riddle for Berliners to find a street remained a big question.

      ‘Twelve euros,’ pronounced the taxi-driver. The girls paid and got out. What now?

      It took them about twenty minutes to look for the landlady. Not a soul seemed to know where she was. Their first brainstorming idea was to call up all the apartments one by one and ask. They started with the basement.

      A tall, brown guy with long arms and fingers, his body wet, wrapped up in a towel, gestured vividly to come in. A broad smile on his face. Yves was his name. He excused his wet appearance as he’d been taking a shower when he’d heard the doorbell ring. He suggested calling the landlady. What a cutie pie! No dangerous crooks so far. He called, told the girls to go to second building, fourth floor imitating the landlady’s voice melody. The ladies thanked him and left.

      Katya volunteered to be a pioneer that day. ‘These walls definitely need some repainting,’ she thought observing dilapidating walls as she was climbing the stairs with wide steps skipping every second step. She saw an open door, knocked and in she went. The old wizened lady with unkempt grey hair was standing in the middle of the room vacuuming.

      ‘Hello, are you Frau Wulf?’ yelled Katya to deafen the vacuum cleaner.

      The decaying lady turned off the noisy machine, greeted the girl with a fake smile and began telling things about the flat. Katya had to explain that she first needed to call up the other girls and left. The German landlady resumed vacuuming while Katya ran down the stairs in the same hyper mood.

      ‘Oh my!’ Blondie yelled to the girls. ‘Ancient building with an ancient landlady. The Wolf lady is much more like a Lamb lady, wizened Lamb lady.’

      Blondie grabbed her luggage and hauled it to the fourth floor. She went down again to see how little Yulya was handling her luggage, the size of nearly her own height.

      ‘I’ll help you with your giant stuff. Did you pack your whole wardrobe or what?’ Katya offered a helping hand feeling like Hercules energized with excitement of an adventure.

      Evening. Unpacked. Windows wide open. Hot, stuffy air of the apartment was slowly being mixed with transparent waves of slightly fresh evening of the outside. Fringe was opening the bottle, Blondie fetched the cups (the only drinking vessels they had) and Red-haired was breaking the thick chocolate bar against the table into small squares with loud bangs. After feasting over the chocolate and the booze they were ready to go out.

      They popped out with the question ‘Hey…. Anyone knows where the city center is?’

      They tried to ask the cute Yves, but nobody answered the door bell. Luckily, within a minute they bumped into a German lady who happened to be a colleague of theirs, an English teacher! How good of her to offer them a lift to the clubbing district.

      The club they chose incredibly sucked. How could they choose the worst club ever in the partying paradise of Berlin clubbing stage? They should’ve asked someone for recommendations or at least read 10 tips to go clubbing in Berlin article in the net. Instead they stood on the almost empty dance floor, with the music they couldn’t properly move to unless you were high like Johnny Depp’s character in Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas.

      Some two German chaps approached the ladies and disappointed them as soon as they opened their mouths to speak. Either they were stupidly boring or programmed on a one-night stand small talk. Perhaps both. As if just being there empty-headed but gel-haired would make any girl open her thighs. Do you get horny by looking at a good hair-style and a dumb face? Perhaps sometimes you do. But the girls felt otherwise. That night the Russian trio just wanted to dance the whole night away, to feel their bodies uncontrollably moving to good tunes, meet some pleasant company and stay tuned into the pleasant reality, not get wasted right away with unpredicatable consequences, didn’t they? Was it really adventure they wanted? Or maybe a sensible one.

      The ambience disappointed them. The hyper mood evaporated. And the girls decided not to lose time with the boring male company in the wrongly-chosen club and head home instead and get some sleep before their first day at the language school. If only they knew the way back to their new home. At least they remembered the name of the street, the district and the Berlin TV tower they saw from their window. So there couldn’t be a big problem. Three hints would help them to find their way.

      On their way back through the jolly partying youngsters, the trio bumped into two bright-faced Brits. What luck after all! A surely better way to finish the day! Why is it always two specimen of the opposite sex to three of another kind? Not that the girlies were eager to jump in bed with them that very night, but still, who knows, how charming a man might be and how weak a girl might appear under the magic spell of a good-looking experienced womanizer.

      In a second five of them were sitting outdoors in some pub learning new swear words in English, British English, to be precise. After vigorous negotiations over some drinks the ladies concluded that the grossest and funniest one was a purple-headed monster.

      Although, at first, Katya was obliged to ask, ‘Who is it?’

      ‘Rather WHAT than WHO…It’s penis, honey!’ retorted Yulya sipping her Dry Martini.

      Katya gave a thoughtful smile and then burst out laughing. Thank God no such reaction repeated after words ‘twat’, ‘knob head’, ‘wanker’, ‘bollocks’, ‘bugger’ and so on.

      ‘Well, I learnt my first swear words in English when I was five, I remember it vividly,’ chuckled David, one of the Brits, ‘my Mum used to work as a bartender, so I spent some of my childhood in bars,’ he began his story gulping his beer, ‘you can imagine what kind of language I heard in those bars. Most of them were quite clear to me, so I never asked what they meant. And only one word combination really puzzled me, though it consisted of sorta decent words.’

      ‘The old boy always tells this story to everyone. No shit, it impressed him greatly at that age,’ the other Brit addressed the Russian trio with bored but amusing eyes.

      ‘Funny fart really left my brains puzzled. Since I always asked my Granny questions as she was the only one willing to answer them. All of my whys and whats she’d answer with a smile. The day I asked her what funny fart meant was the last day I spent time in bars. From then on she babysat me all the time,’ finished David.

      ‘And did she tell you what funny fart meant?’ wondered Katya also feeling herself like the puzzled five-year-old David.

      ‘She

Скачать книгу