Winter chess short story from Berlin

Chess blog for latest chess news and chess trivia (c) Alexandra Kosteniuk, 2011


Hello everyone,


A chess friend from Berlin - Keith Schmidt - has sent us this short chess anecdote he says he remembers from a chess cafe party. Enjoy.


Chess in Berlin
On a cold day in December 1945 two chess players were sitting in a coffeehouse in Berlin playing each other and were deeply immersed in the calculations of various chess variations in their game. The Allied Forces were bombing the city heavily and suddenly there was a terrible big noise outside, right in front of the coffeehouse. Something must have been hit and blasted away.


"Bloody noisy outside today!", murmured one of them deeply in thought. "Shut up, damned!"


After about ten minutes the other one said: "It's very cold in here! Why, for christ's sake, can't they turn up the damned heating?"


After the game was finished they went in direction door. The room seemed to be somehow bigger as usual.


"Hey, there is something wrong here, don't you think? I can't find the door." It was already late at night and dark, they went further and suddenly they were standing on the road. They had a look around and were amazed to see, that the forefront of the coffeehouse was completely missing and that a lot of houses were completely destroyed.


From Alexandra Kosteniuk's
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