Day of the City.

and Germany. The Alps advance. A small town on the road to Salzburg (this is important). The restaurant. The Hall
sufficiently large. It is worth an electronic piano on which some kid of customers is trying.
Images of Chopin.

There are several diverse companies in the hall. A company of workers whispers in the corner and periodically
Friendship over something. Someone from the Slavs. Some Eastern people grumble boring in dishes, apparently looking for the remains of pigs there. A small company of decently dressed men in the blinds - those are generally quietly sitting, ticking in the gadgets and it is unclear - where they came from. Me and my wife and children. We are five.

An elderly German enters in a jacket with a tie and shorts. Apparently drunk. Surprisedly looking around the room.
Without seeing the compatriots sadly sitting at the table with us. Ordering food at the bar.
He buys a bottle of shnapps in a cloth bag. He enjoys drinking and looks around the hall with a cheerful gaze. Unmistakably identified in us foreigners, asked - where did we get stuck in this hole? When he learned that he was from Moscow, he breathed and went to the piano. Put a boy out of the table.
I started playing soul jazz. Not bad for the village. And then he sang with Leonardo Cohen’s thick baritone:

I lived a lot in the world, lived in the earthquakes of the rocks of the taiji.

With the strongest accent, but with surprisingly clear pronunciation. The motive was of course his own, but the arrangement in my opinion is no worse than the original march. The hall of verses, everyone turned to the performer.
And then the company of well-dressed men with well-set voices and very competently putting the tone began to sing:

He was buried alive twice.
He knew the separation, loved the grief.

Absolutely unexpectedly, the company of men-workers in the corner when he went to sing, cried out:

But I used to being proud of Moscow and everywhere I repeated the words:
My dear capital, my golden Moscow!

At the end, the whole hall was already singing, and even the Eastern people picked up:

And the enemy never reaches.
To shake your head,
My dear capital,
My golden Moscow!

It was so unexpected and wonderful that the Germans just slept.
We did not hide our tears either. And everything turned out to be very simple.
The well-dressed men were physicists from the MIFI and drove from Munich to Salzburg for the local choir festival. They themselves also sometimes sang in the academic choir of MIFI and therefore were so literate singers. Slavic workers were from Western Ukraine and went to work from Austria to Germany. Eastern people turned out to be Azerbaijanis – merchants from Nakhchivan, and they also visited Moscow and Munich on their own. A German is a simple history teacher from the former Karl-Marx-Stadt, who moved after the unification to the neighboring Berchtesgaden. He played a great piano and knew a lot of songs in all languages.

Then we sang and Let it be, and I blink to the sky, and Black Eyes, and Bella Chao. The local Germans also sang with the acordeon. When we left – the noise, gam, fun and brotherhood of Russians, Ukrainians, Germans, Azerbaijanis and Turks was all over. Thank you, John, for our evening, for the very German hospitality that unites the peoples in reality, not in words. Thank you also, Moscow, for being always and everywhere with us.