The announcement about Innsbruck conference was made a few weeks ago.
It was a surprise for everybody. Departmental folk openly discussed the incredible fact that Austrian colleagues somehow had got the funds to invite their northern colleagues to discuss scientific matters. Some highest connections have been rumored were exploited. On Monday, Herr Doktor Professor Schevchenko decided that he would insist before the Dean that he must travel there. The same very day, the Dean allowed him to travel but using his own research funds.

It was dark Thursday night, when Professor slipped into the lab and
picked up last 500 mL of ethanol. With a long and sad sigh he replaced a stopping cork on his old Wurz apparatus fixed at 78 degrees C and turned off the electric heater. The lab technician, an old timer, who spent some time in Vorkuta after being captured at Tannenberg during the First War frequently, referred to the distillate using strange Slavic name "Khizchionka". Poor Heinrich, he was sent few months ago to the East and soon went missing. Professor recalled old timer's stories about blue sky, -50 C frost, and 3-m snow piles and made a guess that Heinrich most likely is removing piles of snow in Vorkuta.

Professor took the bottle with distillate collected during last few days, mixed it with equal amount of octane, gently stirred, and poured it into steel canisters.
All of a sudden, Herr Professor has detected a pleasing feeling, almost arousal, when he recalled last-year fierce departmental struggle and his winning argument which help him acquire 6 prototypes of double-wall canisters. These have been designed by his fellow scientists from Mechanical Engineering department and proven to be an indispensable proof-leaking "miracle on ice" that allowed catering tons of fresh ice-cream from dairies of Northern Italy to Afrika Corps troops entrenched for the third year in Libian deserts.

On Friday, he drove his aged Opel Cadet to Biology Department building named after E.M. Lardt, famous Bavarian industrialist, parked the car closely to a back door, and put six 5-gallon cans filled with lab-made "benzene" in the car trunk. He extricated a pair of Volkls (tagged as skis for the "folk people" by radio propaganda idiots) which were hidden behind a pile of large carton boxes in a storage room and waxed them thoroughly using leftovers of Parafilm sheets.

And one last gadget: he inserted the 9-mm Luger inside a secret place underneath his seat in the car, just in case he thought. He doubted that he would recognize the moment when this "case" comes…

In the morning, he almost forgot to pick up a pair of thermo-wear pants and camel-wool socks he traded on a black market for a rare manuscript entitled "the AB, and C for a curious mind or a Sciex of Proteomics" written by T. and M. Mann. The down-filled pants were made for Army North and their satellites, for them to survive over arctic chills of growing global cooling.
A small strip of cloth attached to the back indicated the company name:
Thermo for Finns and Gans.

He also spotted felt-made boots and thought that they may be
very useful. Funny story - 20 years ago the boots have been used to
refer as "farewell to youth", but now people start naming it less
offensively as VagiLand.

He drove Opel to the south all night, and after 10 hours, he glimpsed
red roofs of Altstadt Innsbruck. He checked into one of the "inns"
there and slept there for a few hours. Conference session began at the afternoon and Professor went into a buzz-word spree in his keynote address
containing only one page with fresh results delivered to him in January
by his graduate student. Then, younger colleagues proceeded with their routine of selling re-packed results to a bored public. As old saying goes: no money - no honey, Professor smirked. He noticed a lack of females among oral presenters and sadly thought that his Biophysical Department is constantly loosing best cadres to Pharma Department.

Complaining about a terrible headache, he made a good excuse
to avoid late evening chit-chat gathering. He quickly got dressed up for his journey and jumped into the car. An hour later he found himself near the village called Kann-Kunne, greeting a peasant family living in an old farm
house: their son was one of his first postdocs.

Long time ago, this postdoc used to invite Professor and his the rest of the research group to Kann-Kunne during spring breaks. Herr Doktor liked this place, he vividly recalled wild parties that used to happen here as well as a tart taste of local beverage called "tchatcha" (what a weird Swiss word!).

The old farmer invited him into the house, his wife immediately filled the space on a large rustic table with a big jar of pickles; a bottle with aged Austrian schnapps (for a special guest) immediately appeared nearby.
They started to talk about old good times and Professor prepared himself for a series of long and pitiful laments of an old chap. Yet, soon after the third 200-mL glass, the chap went under the table. "Well," - thought Professor- "and these Austrians think they can be in command". Looking at unconscious body on the floor, he felt himself almost as a terminator or a mighty wrangler somewhere in the American West (he strangely thought about California).
Near the bottle, he left a note: I will be back.

He took a handful of pickles from the jar, wrapped it with waxen cover sheets peeled from last issue of Angewande Chemie he always carried with him, and put the pickles into his jacket pockets. He went outside to the car, opened the trunk, put on felt boots, took the skis, and placed his boots into the ski bindings made of ersatz leather. With a strong push, using Aluminium poles he moved his trained body up the hill - a long way to the mounting pass.

In a few hours, he found himself staying in the snow on a top of the pass.
He looked down the valley, and get overwhelmed with an amazing view of multiple lights from sleeping villages spread over snowy slopes of Swiss Alps.
An invisible line separated his existence with constant nigh-illumination ban from concert of lights in a free world.
Zusammen fassen! Einzats! - he showed into the thick frozen air.
Einzats- Einzats-Einzats - repeated echo...

Victor arrived exactly 10 minutes to eleven and, laconic as always, greeted him with one word. While unpacking his rucksack and especially when opening a bottle with hazelnut liquor, Victor started to talk...

"Remember Old Opry House of Tennessee, Professor? We soon will drink exactly the same moonshine as I brought across the border to our party there"

"Yeah, Victor" - replied Herr Professor - "Tennessee was the last gathering where we witnessed a fantastic closing event. And then I must admit I still remember dancing Valeria, a postdoc from Brazil...?"

"Stop here, stop here ... my friend...it is all so ... so painful - abruptly interrupted him Victor.

At 23 hours and 2 minutes Professor filled the glasses with Victor's liquor.
They sat on the snow and turned their bodies to observe a narrow crescent rising on the east side of horizon. Silently, they drank the first shot and, immediately, the second one …pickles cleared the path for the third …

Soon, Angewandte Chemie went burning to make them feel a little bit warmer.
They did not talk to each other for awhile but after a few minutes they started to sing in low-pitched voices. Rare gusts of winds blew foreign words from their lips down to sleeping Ricola valley…

Early in the morning, a stray Swiss adventurer, who slept few hundred meters from the pass in a snow den, awoke and got confused about strange sounds he was hearing through constant wind whiffs: his tongue refused to pronounce it but his brain, brisk in the morning, re-winded it correctly - Marshall Voroshiloff, and No-ot-taigee.