Growing it out

Growing it out
Originally uploaded by udge

Or, things I didn't expect to be different and difficult when I moved to Germany.

I can't find a barbershop in Stuttgart.

In London there was, if not one on every streetcorner, at least one in every High Street. There appears to be none at all in Stuttgart.

There are plenty of hairdressers, mind you, and many of them will do men's hair too. But a hairdresser is not a barber.

A true barbershop is a tiny hole-in-the-wall place. It has cracked leather chairs and hairsnippings on the floor, and a stack of three year old soft-porn magazines to read while you wait (upscale barbershops replace these with real-estate or financial services mags, but the principle and the antiquity remain the same). A barber shortens your hair in ten minutes, and charges you ten bucks for it.

My inner cheapskate is really objecting to spending an hour and sixty bucks in a hairdressing salon.

Perhaps I'll go back to buzzcutting my hair myself on Saturday mornings.


In other news it is miserably hot and muggy. I'm really suffering in this heat and humidity. Roll on Autumn, I say.