Seeing as the summer semester in Konstanz had its kick off yesterday, I thought it fitting to get back into the blogosphere with less geeky posts than this.
A week ago I went to get a haircut. Being a student means one a) has limited finances and b) doesn't worry about one's looks the same way as some of the more respectable classes in society do (that is not to say one doesn't worry about one's looks at all, it's just that on average one's worries can be satisfied without the help of a high-class haircut). Considering these two things I went to the cheapest barber in town, Coco's Friseur. In case some of my readers are actually from the area, here is a GoogleMaps link showing its location.
In this establishment one can get quite a presentable haircut for only 5 euros, if one asks for a "dry" one. Since a "wet" haircut is essentially just getting your hair washed before getting it cut, I don't see the point in spending more money on it instead of washing one's hair at home right before hitting up the barbers.
The downside to Coco's being so cheap is that it is insanely popular. Out of the two times that I have been there, the wait always exceeded an hour.
This was one of the two times, so I did not at all regret bringing my a notebook with me along with a tome of Oscar Wilde.
I did, however, have time to make some observations in the place during those almost two hours that I spent there.
Observation 1:
It is amazing what ladies from the older generation want done with their hair. Almost every one of them wanted her hair redyed, recurled, rewashed and God knows what else. Almost every one of them had a head covered in rollers or tin foil at some point during her stay. I suspect (though I have no conclusive proof, I wish someone would do a study), they were the ultimate cause of the long wait times.
Observation 2:
The behavior of the older gentlemen complimented that of the ladies in a strangely gallant way. Their hair situation seemed to be the opposite of the ladies: most of their heads possessed only a fraction of that which originally covered them completely I am sure (or else there was a whole generation of bald young men, but I have never encountered any supporting evidence for this). And yet these fellows braved hours of stupefying wait while the ladies beautified themselves endlessly only to sit themselves in a barber's chair and ask for their sole remaining lock of hair to be shortened by one centimeter.
At the time I found the whole picture slightly annoying. The next day I thought it touching.
Observation 3 (unrelated):
I never really noticed until last Tuesday how strange a conversation between a barber and their client appears to an on-looker. Somehow one forgets that normally one converses with a barber through the mirror in front of one's chair. To someone looking from the side (as I was doing for a good portion of the day), the picture is reminiscent of a Duo Interp skit, where both of the participants cannot make direct eye contact and so are staring and making faces at the space in front of them, pretending that their partner right there too. Seeing barbers and their clients perform this was a bit unusual to me, for some reason.
