My First German Haircut

 

 I survived my first German haircut!  I'm always nervous when it comes to my hair and I've heard (and experienced) enough horror stories about getting your hair cut when abroad. If you know me, which, hopefully you do if you're reading this, this process started much earlier than today. I started scoping out salons a few months back. Any time I was on a walk, I'd check the prices listed outside of a salon and then look it up online. I asked friends and stalked answers posed by other international women in Hamburg asking the same question.

Eventually, I settled on a place just around the corner from my apartment that I sometimes run past. Sometimes, I would say to myself, "OK, today's the day you'll go in and make an appointment." But then I'd just run right past it. With long hair, I can really push how often I need to visit a salon, but there is still a point you reach where you really need a trim. This was over a month ago for me. However, I would strangely have a great hair day every now and then which made me think I could wait a few more days. Or wait until all my visitors were back home.

Last Thursday, I discovered I could email the salon. By Saturday, I still hadn't received a response, so I promised myself I would walk over on Monday after work. Until, it was Monday morning and I remembered that salons aren't usually open on Mondays. Tuesday morning, I sucked it up and called on the phone. I asked for the soonest appointment in the evening or maybe during the lunch hour. 

"How about 1pm?"

"Today??"

I did a quick review of some basic hair vocab and walked over during the lunch hour. We reviewed that I wanted a wash, cut (just the tips!), and dry for long hair. Over here, the salon is quite á la carte. You select your hair length and then any combination of wash, cut, and dry. I definitely wanted all three. I tried the "come in with wet hair get the hair cut and leave with wet hair" approach during an Austrian haircut that I still regret to this day, so I knew that was not an option. (It was my second haircut in Innsbruck and it terrified me so much that I didn't even try to cut my hair during my two years in Vienna.)

I was prepared to talk about myself and explain my life story all the way up until I sat down in the chair, but I was pleasantly surprised that she didn't asked a single thing about ME only about hair. I didn't even have to justify my German or my accent or my general American-ness. It was great.

My hair drying experience was also new and something I might have to try in the future. At home, my hairdresser usually uses a flat iron to give me lovely curls that I can never replicate. Here, my hairdresser used round hair brushes to achieve lovely curls that I will desperately try to recreate. At one point I had a total of three round hairbrushes hanging from my head. She left them there for a few minutes at a time just like a roller. I think it worked out quite nicely.

If only I could look like this everyday.

At least I have some last-minutes plans with a girlfriend tonight, so someone outside my office gets to see what I could look like if I had the patience or talent to do my own hair. I need some tips from Kate Middleton.