Berlin: a cut above the rest
WELCOMING: THE PEOPLE OF THE CITY ARE DELIGHTED TO HOST TOURISTS A simple visit to the barber ended up being an entire day.
ravel apps: they do not always work as well as advertised. What should have been a simple visit to the barber ended up being an entire day and night out in Germany’s Berlin.
As a regular traveller, I feel done in for not being told. You know exactly what I am referring to when it comes to those praised travel apps, particularly those that claim to assist with translating any language into English.
On a recent trip to Berlin I found myself in desperate need of a haircut and a shave, all because I had underestimated just how quickly my head and facial locks grow in a few days. Not being a German native, I decided to download Google Translate onto my phone. Mistake number one.
I have always regarded my grooming sessions at my barber to be a bit of a treat, as it is “me” time and I get pampered, very much like when ladies go to a spa to relax. I have used the same barber for years and by now he knows exactly how I like my treatment: as close as possible to a “chiskop”, without it being a “chiskop”.
Then I also love a clean shaven face, not leaving a single strand of hair. Now try punching that into any app and you are guaranteed digital anarchy.
Depending on where you are in vast Germany, the word for haircut can be slightly different, and in Berlin, it is haarschnitt, but I used the incorrect word thanks to my app, and I ended up asking for a frisur, which is the word for a hairstyle.
Because the Germans are such huge soccer fans, as soon as my barber in the city centre heard that, he must have immediately conjured up ideas of radical styles spotted by the likes of black players, like Didier Drogba’s ridiculous straight perm, but luckily my hair was a bit too short for that.
Then he said something about Côte d’Ivoire and I assumed he was asking if I wanted to dye the top part of my hair blonde and leave the rest short cropped. “Nein
danke” was my swift response. This was the point when I had a Eureka moment and I thought back to my childhood when all anyone had to do to be considered cool was to ask the barber for a “German” cut. Apparently the Germans have no idea what this entails.
Even after that I still had faith in Google and switched to Google Talk chat bots, which allows you to type any text and have it instantly translated into a language of your choice. The great thing about this is that it offers an audio option, which speaks for you.
I felt like myself and the barber were stuck in a war where one party was not willing to relinquish power to the other, as I would ask one question, which would be followed by one of his own.
I asked if he had hair food – a readily available gel in all black South African salons and barber shops that helps keep hair dandruff-free – and he asked what kind of hair needed to eat?
Just as I had enough of all Google apps, I scoured my phone for photos of what I look like without hair, to show the barber, and just as I found the perfect photo, my battery died. T