Haircuts can be tricky business in any language. The stakes
are high. Sure, it all grows back eventually, but in the meantime you may have
to go around looking terrible.
As I noted in an earlier post, Spanish showers are kept to
five minutes at a max, and preferably less; and as I’ve been letting my hair
grow long for the last few years (this was its record length), the shower
limits were very challenging. Washing so much hair is also just a lot of work,
and so I’ve gotten sick of having long hair, even if I think it looks pretty
nice. So I decided to finally cut it off, and return to the halcyon short-hair
days of my younger years.
There are three haircut salons on the short street I live on
(seriously, they’re everywhere), and between advertised prices of 10, 11, and
16.50 Euros, I decided to be safe and choose the 11-Euro place. That’s just
about what I pay for a rockbottom haircut at home.
I had a three-hour break before class, so I figured it was a
perfect time. The two stylists were halfway through cuts and told me I could
wait, if I wanted; I didn’t mind, and then as I flipped through National
Geographic I started to worry after all…who knew how long a Spanish haircut
could take? And with all the requisite schmoozing?
To my surprise, there was almost no chatter between the
stylists and their subjects (that’s basically mandatory in the States, and I
had assumed would be even more so here). Finally it was my turn. I quickly told
her what I wanted done, having made sure to look up the necessary vocabulary
online before I went (trim, bangs, layers…), and then she
washed my hair. She put some kind of conditioner in it when it was very wet and
then curled it into a towel turban and said I could put my head up while we
waited for the chemicals to work their way through. The towel was small, and
quickly the wetness from my hair ran down the sides of my face and was dripping
all over my shirt. She popped outside for a quick smoke. (Really quick: she lit the cigarette, took two desperate puffs, and
then stamped it out on the ground.)
Then she cut my hair, a little shorter in the back than in
the front, about an inch below my chin. It looked good, and then she decided to
make it really curly and hairspray it to the max… Not what I would have chosen,
but it came out after one shower. I had been careful to note that my hair
really curled and so I wanted it at a certain length when dry (I’ve had stylists cut it to the right length when it’s
wet, and that’s no good…), and as such she erred a little on the long side (I
wish it were a quarter-inch shorter), but it turned out well, I think. It
certainly feels great!
Surprising sticker shock, though: it ended up being 30
Euros! Turns out, there are all sorts of hidden fees like depending on whether
your hair is short or long, how many inches you’re getting cut off, etc. Of
course, there’s no difference in labor whether you cut off three inches or a
dozen, but I guess that’s how the pricing system works. Ah well. My most
expensive haircut ever!
So that was that. On a completely different subject, I found
out something absolutely fascinating recently. As you might remember from a
previous blog post, the Spanish schedule is very different from the American
one, and, as it turns out, pretty unique in Europe. Lunch is no earlier than 2;
dinner is at 10.
But guess what? It’s not that way because of some organic,
circadian/cultural rhythm. It’s actually highly artificial the way it
developed.
In 1942, Franco turned back all the clocks 1-2 hours from
Greenwich Mean Time to be in sync with Hitler-Germany’s time zone. For whatever
reason (I’m sure he had one, but I don’t know what it was) he structured things
so as to highly encourage the new regimen: dinner-time propaganda broadcasts
were cast at 10 PM; primetime TV started afterwards (and to this day, a quarter
of the population watches TV from 11-1 AM; that’s when all the top shows are). Rural
Spanish people, with their deep agrarian roots, continued to set their lives by
the sun, and went on having lunch when the sun was directly overhead in the
sky, when it should have been noon—at two o’clock or so.
Portugal also turned its clocks to Nazi time during the war,
but later they reverted back to the correct time zone…but even after Franco,
Spain never did.
After seventy years the schedule has become pretty deeply
culturally ingrained. But combined with the Spanish tradition of long,
several-hour lunch break/siestas where many people go home to their families
and then return to work afterwards, the result is that many people work well
into the night. Spain actually has the longest workday in all of Europe. (From
what I’ve seen, depending on the industry the hours seem to be something like
this: 9 AM-2; 5-9 PM.) Many people wish the workday were shorter, so they’d
have more time to be at home with their families, for example; but many also
find the idea of a rigid 9-5 schedule with a half-hour lunch break at one’s
desk unfathomable.
The fiscal crisis has led the government to reconsider the
national schedule. (Among other things, studies show that the longer the
workday, the less the productivity—and considering that taking short breaks or
doing “personal” errands on the job [such as popping off to the bank, for
example, since it’s only open when you’re working] is pretty normal, I can see
how that might be…Also given the simple logic that if your task is shorter,
you’ll be able to focus on it more.) Proposed bills include turning the clocks
to GMT the way they should be and moving the primetime TV schedule to be an
hour earlier.
It’s just so interesting how this time thing developed, a
study in relative versus biological time. On the one hand, it took root
effectively because Spanish people disregarded their clocks and continued to
follow the sun; and on the other, it was manufactured/imposed by
propaganda/primetime TV schedules. Fascinating.
Also, why am I finally posting this after no posts in a
while? Quite simply: the wifi in my residence hall cut out on me for the
last two days. Without that distraction,
I was suddenly so productive myself… Stay tuned for a longer blog post in the near future (insh'allah).
Love,
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