What I did today.

I needed a haircut. The last person to cut my hair was Andrea, the last time I was in Berlin. That was…November. It really was horrendous.

I asked Majda where she gets her hair cut, and asked if she could make me an appointment. She said I didn’t need to book in advance, there’s a lady with a salon attached to her house, she’d just call right before I headed over to tell her I was coming. I asked if she could tell her I need a trim and if she could colour my hair also – I’d heard it was cheap here.

Just go to DM and pick up a box, Majda said. The Lady would do it for me. Alright then.

Majda drew me a map to get to The Lady’s house, and wrote down what I wanted done to my hair on another slip of paper. (The Lady doesn’t speak English). I headed there this morning, after stopping to by pharmacy hair dye.

The salon is a small room with creamsicle-coloured accents. The Lady’s hair matches the motif. When I arrived, she and her older, slightly-toothless friend, were chatting, smoking. I handed her the instructions, hoping Majda hadn’t decided to play a prank on me by writing ‘Shave her head’ in Bosnian. The Lady nodded at the note, and again when I handed her the box of dye.

She put the dye in for me, scrubbed it out vigorously 10 minutes later. She gave me the quickest haircut ever – I’m unconvinced she could have gotten it all – while constantly chatting to her smoking friend. I thought I caught a few words I could understand, became convinced  they were talking about eating potatoes.  My hair, from what I could see, was much darker than ‘Caramel Brown’; in fact it looked a bit…purple. Dark purple.

The Lady spent much longer drying, smoothing, twirling, braiding and unbraiding my hair than she had cutting it. Dry, it looked a little less purplely; and in all, ended up being exactly what I wanted. I smiled and nodded at her, got up to leave, asked the price. 20 KM, or €10.

Dobro, dobro. Hvala, hvala.

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