Komsomolskaya Pravda: "Waitress in Sochi café serves special visitors – the Prime Minister and the President"
We had a hunch that the Ostrovok (Islet) cafe would become the most popular place in Sochi overnight. After all, it just recently served two rather high-profile guests: the President and the Prime Minister. No doubt, we thought, it's probably impossible to even get a table there now without making reservations...
By no means!. In fact, the cafe turned out to bechilly and empty. It seems that everyone prefers to spend lunchtime at the beach, and the cafe is only packed in the morning or evening.
We were lucky enough to meet the waitress who served the VIPs - 22 year-old Yevgeniya .
"Of course, I was surprised to see them", she said. "Mr Medvedev said, ‘Hello! How are you?' I just answered that everything was okay."
"You mean you weren't warned about the visit? It's hard to believe it was spontaneous..." we asked.
"Yes, all the newspapers have been saying that the whole thing was rehearsed, but they were really just walking down the embankment and then they stopped in here. We had other customers at the time, just ordinary customers, and they definitely were not ‘undercover' security men. There were security guards here too, but they didn't search anyone or check anything."
Prices in the cafe are affordable by Sochi's standards. Beer starts at 70 roubles, and shish-kebab at 100 roubles. When asked how much Putin and Medvedev left for a tip, Yevgeniya simply laughed. Apparently, upon seeing his special guests, the café owner proclaimed: "It's all on the house!" So, unfortunately for the waitress, there was no tip.
Perhaps the funniest part of the story is that the waitress herself came to Sochi from St Petersburg, hoping to put feet up and make some money over her summer break.
"I work as a waitress in St Petersburg too. I always told myself I'd run in to either Putin or Medvedev there", she said, smiling, "but instead I hit the jackpot and met them both in Sochi."
Tatyana Chernikova, and Alexander Beifus (KP-Krasnodar)
