‘Ok, we’ll stop for now,’ said Tanya gobbling up her breakfast, ‘And… Don’t touch my cup, I’ll finish it after the shower,’ warned Tanya as she sipped her coffee with great care so as not to burn her own bad-words-dirty tongue. In a couple of minutes, she vanished in the washroom with her green towel. Did they bring red, yellow and green towels on purpose to hang it on the balcony strings symbolizing traffic lights? Red- don’t disturb! Green- welcome! Yellow- hell, beware!
Soon they got used to their new morning behavioral system. Katya remained responsible for breakfast. Yulya was to wash up after breakfast and Tanya after dinners. Who made dinners? Whoever wanted or whoever was the hungriest. Being at their language school till one p.m. they had only apples perhaps or yogurts they’d brought with them. Until dinner, they hung around in the city center.
Alexanderplatz was their most frequented metro station. They window shopped and sightsaw a lot.
Once they went accessory-shopping. And Tanya didn’t pay for nail polish by accident. She felt somewhat ashamed at first, especially with the super moralised Blondie beside her. But then Yulya repeated the trick and from time to time Fringe and Red-haired went shop-lifting. Katya didn’t preach morals to them but just refrained from their new entertainment.
After that, they always headed to net supermarkets such as Aldi or Espar to buy food to cook at home. Evenings were always party time for them. The girls drank cheap wine, met their language school friends, hung out in the parks playing silly games, singing songs and going wherever they were invited to.
Every day they went out and saw an ever-growing row of their wine bottles standing near a garbage container, wondering why they were still there. No one bothered to tell them there was a special container for glass.
It was one of those days when they got together with the whole crew of international students, those who were also learning German. Before going to a club, they popped into a tiny liquor store, places mainly owned by Turkmen or Arabs. One could buy drinks, chocolate and some snacks in the middle of the night there. Everyone was already out of the kiosk with their bottles of beer, but Tanya and Katya were still thinking about what to have. They just didn’t like beer.
‘What an attractive back and cute curly hair he has,’ thought Katya to herself when she was passing a guy standing in front of the beer fridges and felt a strong impulse to brush against his back but held herself back. Finally, the ladies agreed to beers as the wine prices were higher than they’d expected. Why couldn’t they have what they wanted? A perpetual question. To have or not to have was merely the question of money. No money- no desires to fulfill. Forget your desires till you earn… or steal… or maybe an opposite sex will provide for you? These were the thoughts to consider.
When they strolled out of the kiosk with the bottles of their disliked drink, a friend of the cute curly hair wondered whether the girls were Polish. Why is no one capable of telling a Pole from a Russian? Perhaps for the same reason not many can tell a Portuguese from a Spaniard. Being polite girls they answered the question and kept on walking.
‘Why don’t we talk to the guys?’ ventured Tanya addressing Katya. ‘Maybe we’ll get some wine after all,’ Tanya winked at Katya.
Naïve Katya wondered, ‘How?’
‘The guys! If they consider us bedworthy, we might have a chance,’ lectured Tanya with her eyes full of wisdom.
‘But I don’t wanna go to bed for a bottle of wine,’ warned Katya mockingly scared – fun of adventure was only in her head.
‘Me neither, silly. Let’s just have a talk first,’ replied Fringe.
Simultaneously they turned around and joined the guys. A lovely talk with Sven (an outgoing young man with tangled hair and fogged grey eyes, the one who asked if they were Polish) went in English. Why English? The girls were simply experiencing a psychological barrier with the German language. And, vice versa, Mr. Curly Hair had problems with speaking English, didn’t he? Or was he just shy? No matter what it was, he looked so important standing there as if he was the President of the Dominican Republic or something. Filip was his name. Realizing that their small talk was stretching to a common small biography about Tanyushka and Katushka (Russians prefer to ‘colour’ words showing their attitude towards them by adding all sorts of diminutive suffixes, so Tatyana might equally be called in a diminutive way Tanushka, Tanushkin, Tanchik, Tanusik, Tanechka, Tanyok and so on, depends on how rich your imagination is), the ladies decided it would be better to meet up the next day. And right now they had to produce, ‘Sorry, but we need to catch up with our international buddies.’
‘So if you’re not coming along, give us your phone numbers and we’ll get in touch,’ Blondie finished Tanya’s thought in a hurrying voice.
A moment of silence stood within the Germans staring at each other in bewilderment.
Mr. Curly Hair blurted out, ‘I thought GUYS are supposed to take girls’ phone numbers’.
Everyone burst out laughing. The thought ‘When you make up your mind to ask for our phone numbers, sweet hearts, we’ll be already heading back home to Russia to drink tea out of samovars in frosty winters with valenkis on,’ was distinctly read in the Russian laughing eyes.
Finally, the phone numbers were exchanged, and the females headed towards the having-fun rest of the eve.
The next day they met, Mr. Curly Hair was ten minutes late. Who said that Germans were punctual? Raise your hand!
Hungry, so hungry everyone was. Walking the district in circles they finally managed to pick an Italian pizza place and share two Margaritas and one Diabolo pizza.
‘Geee, it’s so damn spicy,’ said Tanchik breathing like a locomotive.
‘Diabolo means devil, it’s supposed to be hot, like in hell,’ hinted the waiter overhearing the comment and asked if they wanted a refill.
‘Oh, that is very good to know. Thank you,’ replied Katya with a little irritation noticing that at the moment she reminded herself her own mother who didn’t like when people answered questions that weren’t directed to them.
As the waiter turned around, Katya’s eyes slid to his butt. Addressing the girls she said in Russian, ‘А у него классная попка! (Meaning ‘What a nice ass he has!’)
The waiter turned around and said in pure Russian, ‘Спасибо!’ (meaning ‘thanks’)
Katya turned red like the tomato sauce on the Diabolo pizza.
In a couple of hours, they appeared at Filip’s place, under the pretense that they needed some German magazines or books to make a project for their German course. The girls didn’t feel uncomfortable about inviting themselves to somebody else’s place so fast. Could their way be described as chutzpah?
Filip’s flat. All white, same as theirs. Again they felt like being in a hospital. Only later the girls learnt that almost all German apartments were white, rented ones in particular.
Wow, so many records here! Filip was crazy about music. Most of his records were old-school hip-hop. Frankly speaking, the Russian ladies couldn’t tell one vinyl from another, but they were still marveled by the amount of them. So when Mr. Curly Hair asked what they would like to listen to, the girls felt at ease answering in unison, ‘As you wish’.
All of a sudden Sven did a headstand.
‘Um, is it what Germans do when they listen to hip-hop?’ wondered Yulya to herself and asked out loud, ‘Can I use your washroom?’
Filip waved his hand in the direction of the washroom.
As the Red-haired reached the secret room she opened the cold water tap to prevent others from hearing her toilet procedure sounds. How inventive she considered herself every time she did