Sun’s out guns out—because at 33°C, it’s finally warm enough to put away the sweatshirt
and opt for a tank top, flipflops, and all the finer things in life. That’s
right, after heading south through nearly all of the Balkans and pseudo-Balkans
(here’s looking at you, Slovenia ),
I managed to find some sun. Croatia ,
Serbia —you were
both just too damned cold and rainy. And while I managed to get weird in Belgrade
for a while, and even got an opportunity to practice reading some Cyrillic
(plus or minus a few letters of the Russian alphabet), I got tired of it being 13°C
with a consistent mist of gloom. On a side note, I’m sure the weather contributed
to this, but a disproportionately high percentage of the population dressed
like they were going to a Nirvana concert; between the infrastructure and the
people, Belgrade felt eerily similar
to the early 90’s.
Oh—also, to you Fahrenheiters out: there don’t worry about
trying to do the calculation, just interpret 13°C as “Boston in April right before
all the girls suddenly get prettier and start to wear sundresses.” Glad we
cleared that up.
Right. So as you might have guessed, or—more likely—weren’t
even thinking about, it was tank weather (read: “best weather”) in Morocco
as well, but not quite as socially acceptable to dress as such. And despite my
enthusiasm for living in the grey area of social acceptability, being
underdressed in a predominately Muslim country seemed too tactless—even for
someone like me. I hope you’re not too surprised, because I feel like some of
you probably are.
But putting this where-are-you-going-with-this-train back on
track, part of warm weather means that it’s too hot for the “fro”, and that it
has to “go” (this is my hair-stance during winter months as well, actually, so
really I just needed a haircut). However, I’m a long ways away from my go-to
barber (shout out to friend/roommate/Italian Nick Fasano), and almost as far
away from one that speaks English. This, boys and girls, is a situation that
can get a little dangerous.
Now, I’m all for rolling the dice every now and then, but
there are a few things in life that you probably shouldn’t leave up to chance. With
services especially, it pays to do your homework and make sure you have the
right person for the job. To name a few areas: automotive repair, lawsuits, and
circumcision—you can’t just hire the first person you find off the street. That
said, some things grow back, and experience tells me that there is a category
of services where you can test your luck without too much risk. Sometimes you
win, and sometimes you crap out, but what a rush! Though it’s a very specific
type of haircut, I believe that language-barrier-haircuts fall into this
category. I could even go so far as to argue that this would be a great title
for the category as a whole, but I won’t bore you with my insightful and
intelligently articulated arguments on the subject.
So anyway, today I received my first—and last—Macedonian
haircut. I say “last” because I doubt I’ll ever be in Macedonia
needing a haircut again, and not necessarily because it was a bad cut. Quite
the opposite, being the first haircut I’ve received from someone besides a
roommate in roughly two years (Nick, if you’re reading this, I’m so sorry you
had to find out this way), I was pleasantly surprised. The result was
impressive, given that I had no way of explaining to my barber what I wanted
other than pointing at my head with a scissoring motion. Then again, he
basically gave me the same haircut that he had himself, and he cut me twice
while he gave me a shave. But hell, you get what you pay for, and for someone
as cheap as me the price was right.
So you’re probably wondering what I’m getting at here,
and—per usual—what my point is. Sadly, it’s really just more of a life update:
the weather is warm, I can wear tank tops again, and I left behind hundreds of
little pieces of me for Macedonia to remember me by. Also: I’m going to Greece
tomorrow, so if anyone knows Greek, now would be a great time to teach me. Word.
Happy trails,
JHW
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