My father was nine years old when the war began and he lived in a small village. Sometimes he talked about war. I was, of course, expecting heroic stories with shots and explosions, but he was telling from how they survived.
I will tell you from the first person (for simplicity).
The Germans came in suddenly. At noon, tanks appeared in the streets, and German soldiers began to run around the houses. Two soldiers came to us. There were chickens in the yard. One of the Germans, throwing the machine behind his back, began to catch chickens. They ran away and did not give in their hands. He fell a couple of times. The second, in sight, laughed amusingly. The first was tired. He took the machine and dropped the line. A few chickens fell. He took only two bodies and they laughed away.
All the harvest, from the collective fields, the Germans took. Nearly all the crops were taken from the villagers. They took a cow and a calf from us, leaving only one cow, but they took all the seed.
The winter came early, but the potatoes were not all gathered. But the Germans forbade it. At night, my mom and I avoided patrol, sculpted her.
Frozen potatoes have no taste at all. And my grandmother kept the salt only for bread, and sometimes did not add it.
Cows also need something. We wore her carpet. Because of this milk gave the needle. And also from a needle, my grandmother made a decoction, which they drank instead of tea.
In the spring they cooked the soup of urticaria (soup), and the labyrinth was dried and added to bread.
The Germans stood there. They settled in houses. We lived in Senegal. They ate in the middle of the village, where there was a kitchen. The cook was a thick and eternally evil German. His assistant was young and clever. In the morning, the assistant gathered the child (then we began to come by ourselves) and we cleaned the potatoes, and the cleaning could be taken. After lunch the assistant gathered and the younger child (then we began to come by ourselves). The cook spilled the rest of the lunch equally. His assistant watched for the elderly not to offend the younger.
The Italians were there. They were not like the Germans. They bought milk, eggs and chickens, but we exchanged for a bowl.
Near the village there was a stall where we swam and fished. There were three Italians. They bathed, then forced us to depart from the shore, lie down and clamp our ears with their hands. They threw a grenade into the water. We picked the biggest fish and showed on the fingers that the rest could be picked up.
It was already cold. We caught fish. Police passed by. One of them threw a grenade. We were overwhelmed by water. The policemen laughed away. I had ears sick for three days, and my younger brother was a rabbit for the rest of his life.
The breach from the east was approaching. The Germans began to gather the inhabitants and drive them under the convoy of police to the west. My grandmother was already very sick. She was shot in the house.
In the evening, police and villagers fled. We stayed in the woods for two days. Eat grass and bark. Even my little sister (who was 5 years old and loved to cry loudly) never said a word.
There were two Soviet soldiers. They broke the forest. They said our village is free. Then they got a bowl and bread. When we ate, they gave my mom a few cans of pasta and a bowl of bread. One of them, scattered in his bag, got a chocolate trophy. He gave his sister in his hand. And crushing her for the hair on his head ran to catch his companion.
Momma stood, pressing the canned food and bread to her chest and tears flowed, and the sister looked at her and didn’t know what to do to her.

Very poor everyone lived in the USSR, everywhere something was collected - metal, maculature, herbaries, coins, marks.
No money was collected for treatment.

Enemies, in order to take the fortress, always tell the defenders stories about the happy lives of those who surrendered to them. The heads are cut off later.

To the question of anecdotes in intercultural dialogue.
I recall a long-standing case from practice. I went with a delegation to China for purchases, at one technology company we were welcomed by a very nice lady-manager. Naturally we were invited for lunch.

We sit down, everything is delicious (at least it looks delicious, I say more), we talk. Suddenly the head of the Russian delegation runs into an anecdote, which he first tells me with the expression of full pleasure of his joke:

A man and his wife are in a carriage, the horse is stumbling.
The man once.
They go on, and the horse goes on again.
The man: two.
They go again, and the horse is spotting again.
The man: three.
He gets a gun and kills a horse.
My wife is confused: What are you? Why did the horse kill?? to
The man once.

I see with a nervous smile that this joke is somewhat incorrect with respect to women in principle, and in Chinese in the framework of negotiations it will sound strange in general. But no, the joke needs to be, without it there will be no understanding of the Russian soul.

When I break my heart, I translate an anecdote. I ended. The Chinese woman sat down for a few seconds, thought and said, “Once.” I am easily excited, the Russians are confused, the Chinese woman is calmly drinking tea.

I have two conclusions: 1. This woman came out of an uncomfortable situation and defeated her in her favour. It deserves great respect. 2nd Be careful with the demonstration of originality in intercultural dialogue with anecdotes!

c) Kirill Batygin

The duller the school program, the smarter the government in the eyes of the younger generation.

A few months ago, new recommendations for the organization of work came to our office from above. Surprisingly, reasonable and appropriate recommendations. When trying to refer to these recommendations in work, the management replied:

They are just recommendations, they are only recommendations. You may not be guided...and what they understand there.

A few days ago, from the same "top" dropped recommendations concerning dresskod.

This is just a recommendation, we decided.

You are what! These are recommendations! They are mandatory to execute! Everyone immediately start matching the dressing! The management told us.

The main thing is that the costume is seated, caroche.

Our country cooperative is no longer protected in the winter, so I leave the potential thieves in the hallway half a litre, 3 cups and a bowl of cucumbers.

There were “visitors”.

Drink vodka and the bank is empty.

The feet are washed and carefully placed in the buffet.

All property in place.

I drive with my 10-year-old granddaughter in the car and accidentally hit the clakson. In any case, I tell her:

He accidentally pressed.

I understood.

How is?

You didn’t say “the goat.”

The case was in a music school where the teacher is engaged with one student (this is the case). One on one, and immediately a lecture for the crowd.

Report a teacher to a student who is constantly finding scams not to come to the class.

How are you going to finish your training? Where will you go next? How much can I carry single certificates? Where do you just buy them? Van Ivanov even brought the certificate of his death once. By the way, here is he!

Returning home late on a taxi Wandex, in order not to fall asleep, I talked to the driver. He puts mat in every word. I, B is the driver.

I: You less argue, you are recorded.

A: And who?

I am “Alice.”

Q: What does it mean to record?

I: That means Alice is recording everything.

Q: It can’t, if it is, then I’ll remove it.

Q: Calls to the phone: Alice, are you recording me? - a second silence on Gogol, a pleasant female voice from the phone - Well, I don't see anything wrong with it.

*** by

I quietly calculated with him, and he was finding out the relationship with Alice.

Call at work:

and greetings. These are colleagues from Dagestan. Is it possible to take Takayovich?

Call back in half an hour or leave your phone.

Okay you write.

I recorded. I ask, “What is your name?” Without waiting for the answer, I write “Mahomet.” No need to correct.

In fact, the naked king knew very well that he was fooled by fraudsters, but he had no other way to paint before the people in what his mother gave birth.

Business Plan and the Grey Wolf

Grandmother Tamara once became seriously ill and her granddaughter, also Tamara, an eighteen-year-old student from St. Petersburg, moved all affairs and struggled to save her grandmother.
My grandmother lived thirty kilometers from Moscow, in a blooming wooden house, a pre-war building. A garden, a well, a raft, under which the grandfather kept the beaten bricks and rust wheels from Moskovich. It all looked pretty sad and hopeless. But once, when Tom came here as a child and grandfather was still alive, chickens, goats and even goats ran through the courtyard. And at this arrival the house looked empty and thirsty, like an incurably sick patient. Of the survivors, only the grandmother Tamara and Timur were in the house. Where without him?
Timur was a huge gray wolf, but fortunately, he was not too racial as a wolf, so he was considered a dog.
Grandma Tamara, tried to rejuvenate, welcoming a dear guest, but it went badly.
Even Timor did not look like an eagle, which has never happened to him before. An ordinary gray wolf. In the old days, Timur made an indelible impression, he behaved as if the whole house was rewritten on him and grandmother and grandfather were needed here, only to pour water into the bowl, and to shake sugar bones.
Tamara went to the nearest store a kilometer from the house, bought medicines and all kinds of delicacies, drank her grandmother with tea with raspberries, laid her in bed and began to run the house. Well, more precisely, throw away garbage and spoiled products.
Grandma just cried out:

Where is the bread, where is the bread?
Grandma is green.
What a bad thing, green. Cut a little and that’s it. Normal is bread.
How often do you go to the store?
In the summer, once every two weeks, and if the weather is good and I feel normal, then I go every week. I got a car, took it and pulled it. On the way to her I will sit down, rest and go on. And this time, I thought spring was already here. The sun warmed up, I was delighted and ran into the store in one cage, swallowed and got cold here. And in the winter, I am afraid to go so far, well, maybe once a month and I go away. And my retirement is not enough to go shopping every day.

Grandmother, is anyone coming to visit you?
They come in, sometimes.
Who is Aunt Lena?
Lena was two years old when she died. The Kingdom of Heaven.
So then who?
Who is? Who is. Well, it turns out that nobody. Who should go to me? Who needs an old grandmother with a wolf?
- That's what, grandmother, you don't need to sneeze, but to come up with a good business plan.
What is?
A business plan. I study this in the universe. Imagine - every person can come up with and organize for themselves, some powerful business. The main thing is to come up with a business plan.
“Tommy, do you see how I am? What is my business? I am 80 years old. From day to day I stretch my feet. Wouldn’t you leave Timor if anything?
Stop to stop. Can you sell something simple? You also have a track behind the fence, and a bus stop underneath the house.
What to trade? by myself?

Days went by, the sick slowly got up on her feet, and the granddaughter from morning to evening walked through the courtyard and thought about a business plan for the grandmother. At six o’clock in the morning, Tamar was awakened by a wolf. He does not know how to laugh, but to laugh and grind is half-turn.
Tamara looked into the window and saw Timur standing on the roof of the cabin, so it was more convenient for him to look through the fence. Grandma was no longer asleep, she was hanging, listening to the radio receiver.

Grandma, who is he fighting with?
So people go to work.
For what job?
How do I know which? to any. Each has its own. They go to our stop, get on a bus or bus and go to Moscow for work, and back in the evening.

Tamara thought about it:

Grandma, what are these people, in the sense, where do they all come from?
How, from where? These are our villagers. Do you know the lake? Some even come from there. At least an hour from there, a pedestrian will probably get there. What to do? We need to feed the family, and that’s what it takes. It’s good for me, I’m retired yet, and people are forced to go to Moscow every day. There is no hunger, there is no work.

Until the very evening, the granddaughter did not talk to anyone, neither to her grandmother nor even to Timur, and late in the evening she suddenly shouted, frightening her grandmother:

Grandma and Grandma, wake up! Do you remember painting when I was a child? Are there colour pens?

The grandmother was surprised, but gave out a bunch of pencil and long-dried flommasters.
Tamara worked all night and in the morning created a bunch of touching, colorful ads with samples.
And in the morning, even without breakfast, I picked up a tube of glue and left. She reached the village beyond the lake and, starting from there and almost to the house itself, laid out her simple announcement on the pillars and fences:

Dear neighbors!
You can leave your bicycles in the house N2 on our street. (House at the stop, with a green fence) Ask Tamara Pavlovna.
The grey wolf is responsible for conservation.
Payment is purely symbolic, you will like it.”

Since then, three years have passed, Tamara Pavlovna has flourished and changed her mind to die.
Every day, from morning to late evening, in the courtyard of the house, under the raft, there are thirty, and all forty bicycles and even a couple of motorcycles waiting for their owners. Only the gray wolf Timur has more accurate numbers. Timur, too, became sick and looked satisfied and important, as if he had just eaten both the Red Hat and Tamar Pavlovna.
Timor always stands at reception and delivery. Serves people quickly, politely and correctly. He will never let out the courtyard, a client with someone else’s bicycle. Experiments were conducted specifically. Just a wolf blends the smell of a customer with the smell of a bicycle. More reliable than barcode.

The whole village loved Grandma Tamara, because she saves people the most precious thing they have – sleep time. Who has 40 minutes and who has 2 hours a day? Riding a bicycle is not the same as getting your feet dirty.
Students and those who are younger pay grandmother Tamara three hundred rubles a month, the Tajiks cleaned the well, repaired the roof and set up an antenna, someone brings home testicles and bread, someone brings a bowl of milk from under their cow on the big, someone will just thank you, and in case, always to the store for the grandmother.
And so, from the early spring and until the first snow, even in the winter, a pair of snowboards and a motorcycle are left.
Business works like a clock.
To be honest, one day there was a small mistake. Once a Tajik man took his bicycle and tried to chew Timor. The wolf, of course, procompounded his hand.
Very strange case. I, for example, can’t even imagine how it can be thought that in a bank warehouse, receiving gold bulbs from his cell, a armed guard’s head should be bitten in execution.

Downshifting is not when someone worked in the office and then moved to live in the village. The real downshifting is when you come, say, from your own Italian villa on a daytime to some former vice-premier, and you find yourself in an investigative isolation.

In life it is not like in a fairy tale: from beautiful cockroaches grow ugly swanks.

My parents had friends: a complex family, with a walking intellectual husband and a botanical son, Zeney. Zhenya was tall, with large teeth and huge square glasses. Once my mom asked me to "friend with my wife", or the boy is very bad with communication in school. “Of course, mom,” I replied, and this family came to visit us again, and I took Zhenya to the landfill. At the beginning of the 90s, entertainment is relevant. I had a car battery on the landfill. I planned to break it, and out of the aluminum plates to spit a mini bull on a chain. The chain had a dual purpose: to walk the dog, and also to light it in those moments when the thing smelled of petroleum. We discharged this battery, got the plates, in the process of which everything got the electrolyte, for which I got it separately. I look at these plates and think about what shape to pour in the sand. Jennie looked at me kindly and with interest. “Let’s make loads of loads,” I concluded, not to scare Zhenu. I pressed the molds in the wet sand, found the straw, fire, heated, I carefully poured it into the mold, smoothed the edges with water and we have two careful molds. Jenny was in ecstasy. He liked such a simple and exciting process of creation. “Can we cast... the castle?” asked Zhenya. I was a little overwhelmed by his crap. I turned the “design” in my head, as if it should be enough material. “Well,” I replied with no enthusiasm, “the production process has started again, the shape is bigger, we are sitting on top of it. Zhenya himself poured it out of the straw, took a bottle of water and splashed half straight into the shape, into boiling aluminum. I was lucky that I managed to get stuck. The coating, cotton, explosion and all the aluminum layered flatly on everything around, including shoes, ropes, clothes, partly hands and on the Bride's glasses. I was hurt, a couple of large drops fell on the eyelids and cheek, and glued. I was more surprised by the woman’s reaction. He whispered loudly, and said, “Let’s go again!” looking at me through his glasses, which from dioptrical almost turned into mirror aviators. When we came home and stood before our parents, they didn’t even know where to start and how to ask the right questions. The sleeves of our sweaters were consumed with electrolytes, and the pants, shoes and partially the faces were in "silver" as my mom thought at first. Jenny took the initiative into his own hands. His wildly wide smile had not gone from his face since the explosion. He resolutely approached his mother and with a happy voice reposted: "We spilled me a real castet, but it exploded," turned to his father and asked, "Dad, can I take the old battery from the garage?" We should pay tribute to his parents, but we did not stop communicating after that. After our fun his shoes and pants became the object of envy of classmates. The story of the “explosion of the castet” changed the layout of forces and authorities in the school and Zhenya instantly became a “huligan”. But the genes have taken their way and now Zhenya teaches at the University, although I am sure that his self-esteem and the scale of madness have greatly increased after our experiments.

One girl saw a teacher’s salary and became a prostitute.

Atheist programmers are sure that there is no bag.

We built a multi-storey house, I worked there.
And, as in all buildings after removing the plywood, there were a few boards left, which are nowhere - short, broken, cracked - unliquid, shorter. The concrete worker Volodya approaches me (a bad man in general) with a request to give them to him on wood, his private house is melting with a stove.
Yes, for the sake of God, I say, the construction will only be cleaner, but transport and loading, you, Volodya, will provide yourself.
I told the guard that the gazelle with wood should be missed and once a week (on Fridays) Volodya, as a sanitary officer of the building, would honestly clean it from wood dirt.
Man is weak.
And for the third time, when a gazelle loaded with wood came out of the gate, a guard approached me and said that Vova was somewhat overwhelmed and loaded pretty good boards and brushes (a little, 10-12 pieces, but the very fact...), overwhelmed them with unliquidity and left very happy.
I understood that if this is not stopped, then all the saw material from the construction will move to him in the garden, it is a matter of time, and the main thing that I seemed to have allowed myself.
I postponed my education work until Monday.
In the morning it was necessary to make a marking of the columns on the 5th floor, I went up to the floor to check how the work is going and saw how Volodya faithfully painted on the barracks with a floommaster in his hand and under the guidance of a geodeticist on the concrete covering of the axis and the corners of the shell. His jacket rattled a little up and a strip of blue wolf-shaped trusses was visible.
When lunch came (this is holy, exactly at 12:00 the construction is completely shut down, well, if there is no concrete) I went to the concrete workers in the household and asked: well, how well, Volodya, we agreed on wood, and you started to take a good broom from your home building, it's not good Vova.
It is clear that he denied everything, even tried to be offended, which I said with a tired voice: I, Volodya, know everything that is happening at the construction site and I know everything about everyone, for example, I know that you came to work today in blue pants, and you rub me about the blush here.
The pause...
I will never forget those eyes.

Our experts are now so confidently interpreting the technology of cheating in the Ukrainian elections that the question involuntarily arises: where do they have such experience?