October 5, 2020 - Expat in Kaliningrad, Russia

Get Your Haircut!!

Woodoo Barber Shop Kaliningrad. Cut along for a close shave with urban chic, 21st century style and razor-sharp professionalism

Published: 5 October 2020

It had been more than nine months since my last haircut. I remember it well. I was in Bedford, England, at the time, preparing to return to Russia for New Year. I chose D’Arcys out of the myriad hairdressers available, as I had used their services once before and because they are one of Bedford’s better barbers, established in 1998 no less.

Within three months of having returned to Kaliningrad, the coronavirus balloon went up and normal things, such as going to restaurants and bars, including going for a haircut, first took on a sinister character and quickly thereafter, as pandemic panic took root, became widely regarded as no-go areas.

Restaurants were forsaken, bars boycotted and hair was left to grow. Six months later, and looking like Robinson Crusoe on one of his least flattering days, my jenarr (wife) turned into a za nooder (moaner), complaining about how awful my hair looked and that it was high time that I should have a haircut. It had not helped any that in the meantime I had also grown a couple of Victorian sideburns, the legacy of watching one too many episodes of the old TV series The Onedin Line, but, whilst I agreed with the haircut bit, the daily tally of coronavirus cases argued robustly against trips to the barbers.

Summer came and summer went and hair continued to grow and then, on the 3 October, amidst world-media rumblings of a second wave and lockdowns, I bit the bullet, so to speak, and went off in search of hairdressers.

We left the house without really knowing where we were going, but after a short confab decided to head (pun intended) for a hairdressers that we had passed several times, and which we both liked the look of, situated on Nevsky Street.

Knowing that I would have to go barbering sooner or later, I had peeped through the open door on a couple of occasions when passing the shop and liked what I had seen.

Woodoo Barber Kaliningrad

The interior had a modern look (not something that I would normally go for in England, being a gent of a certain age), but there was something about the wooden-clad décor that resonated with me. Wood is good.

Approaching the building on this historic day ~ this would be my first haircut in Kaliningrad ~ we took out our coro masks and applied them accordingly, then Olga went into the building ahead of me to reconnoitre the tariff.

This precaution was endearingly old-fashioned of her, and she soon learnt that the tariffs for the various hairdressing services, although not quite set in stone, were clearly itemised in a book that had been handed to her by a young chap, who I assumed was one of the staff but who, it transpired, was the owner.

I already had my jacket off ready to jump into one of the vacant chairs. There were four or five of these, all clientless, so I could not understand what it was that Olga and the owner were taking so long to debate. I soon learnt, however, that although clippers were not whirring and scissors not chattering, they soon would be, as all the chairs had been booked.

This is something that I am not used to encountering in the UK, at least not in the barbers I use. The normal procedure is to look through the window and if the chairs are full and three or four people waiting, go elsewhere. Conversely, an empty room is a green light.

Nevertheless, just when I thought we would have to book or walk, I worked out (my, how my Russian language is improving!) that the young owner was offering me a lift to another establishment that he owns. This was a new one on me: being chauffeur driven by the hairdresser to a second venue.

Woodoo Barber Kaliningrad

The second establishment met with my approval immediately. It was situated in an old Khrushchev building, typically accessible via a set of metal steps.

Steampunk & Jim Beam at Woodoo Barbers, Kaliningrad

You cannot beat an old building; neither, if you are or were once a Jim Beam bourbon drinker, could you fault the entrance hall, whose dark brick-clad walls are festooned with Jim Beam bottles as well as yankee number plates and retro metal signs. The steampunk pipe shelves on which the Jim Beam bottles sit and the whacky cream and red pop-art settee, with its erotic caryatid framework of leggy nude-women, were just two of an eclectic number of inventive design features which, together with a long ‘bar’ constructed from new ‘old’ pallets and bottles of booze on a shelving unit behind it, confused me ~ happily, I might add: Was this a hairdressers or a trendy 21^st century bar?

Haircut clock in Kaliningrad barbers, Russia — **No doubt about it ~ Time for a Haircut!**

We entered the building in regulation light-blue cotton masks and disinfected our hands with the appliance laid on for this purpose.

After a brief conversation with his staff, which probably went something like “This is the famous British spy, Mick Hart, he needs a haircut so that not even he will recognize who he isn’t”, the owner allocated a barber to me by the name of Andrey, and I was shown to a chair.

I had taken the precaution earlier of removing my mutton-chop sideboards, since I had the notion that they would look thrice-times more strange with short hair than they had when it was long, the other reason being that I had been led to believe that this would be the first time that I would have my haircut whilst wearing a face mask, and the mask sat more easily without the facial hair.

This latter precaution turned out to be unnecessary, however, for I removed the mask before the barber started to alter my appearance. I simply could not see how one’s hair could be cut with one of these things flapping around one’s face and ears.

First, however, as I sat in the chair wearing a monographed chair cloth, I was asked to choose my new hairstyle from a catalogue containing numerous thumbnail photographs of men with modern styles (although, of course, the crux of the modern lad’s hairstyle is a clever fusion of what has already been ~ selecting and mixing elements from the early 20^th century, the 1940s’ and punk eras).

Spoilt for choice if not overwhelmed, it certainly had not been like this in my young days.

I recalled one specific trip to a hairdressers in Fletton, Peterborough. I had gone to the barbers with one of my brothers, David, who also needed his ‘barnet’ trimming. The barber’s shop was as basic as basic. Three kitchen chairs, a small table with a couple of newspapers on it and, of course, the barber’s chair. In those days, you could not distinguish barbers from doctors, dentists and scientists as they all wore white smocks. There was no catalogue of different styles; what choice there was, was written on a chalk board hanging on the wall. In this particular establishment you could have a trim, a skinhead, a short back and sides, or ‘an over the ears’, which leads me to the conclusion that some things really do change for the better!

Woodoo’s catalogue exploded with every kind of hairstyle imaginable, although I cannot recall seeing ‘an over the ears’ among them. But, as there was the very real risk that in choosing one of these hairstyles I would instantly look 30 years younger, I decided that it was not the way to go, and settled for a haircut similar to that of Andrey, the barber, himself ~ who is 40 or more years younger.

Phase 1 taken care of, choosing the look, the cutting and styling commenced.

The second welcome surprise was that I was asked to up-seat and move into a chair next to a sink unit. I was going to have a ‘wet cut’. I had not had this done since I lived and worked in London about 14 years ago. In ‘the sticks’, at least in the barbers I used, they did not offer this option in spite of the fact that it was the easiest and most effective way of cutting and styling my kind of hair, which is difficult (wife: “Just like the rest of you!”).

I hardly dare say it, but say it I must, this young barber had a soft touch and talented hands, quite different from the Boston Strangler-type jobs I had experienced at barbers in the past.

Back in the barber’s chair, I was amused to see Andrey fasten two or three clips to his sleeve, which, with my hair now wet, he proceeded to apply to my hair, scooping it this way and that until I ended up looking like my Chinese top knot had migrated above my forehead. Then the trimming commenced.

A coronavirus haircut in Kaliningrad 2020 — Time for a haircut: Kaliningrad, Russia, 2020

Englishman has haircut in Kaliningrad 2020

Now, please note, as I said earlier, that I have never frequented a modern, I mean a really modern barbers, so all this was new to me. I had graduated somewhat from the chair outside on the pavement with a guzunder on my head, but, generally speaking, over the last 14 years the barbers that I have used have been rather less than ‘cutting edge’.

About five minutes into the scissors work, I was offered a drink. I do not mean a glass of water, I mean a proper drink. There was a choice of alcoholic beverages; I opted for vodka. The drink was complementary, on the house, and was brought out in a good-sized glass with two slices of lemon on a saucer. Andrey gave me a couple of minutes to savour the vodka and chew the lemon. “Now we’re cooking!!” I thought. And “How civilized is this!”

Drinking Vodka at Woodoo Barber — Mick Hart drinking vodka at Woodoo

Mick Hart at Woodoo Kaliningrad — Mick Hart drinking vodka at Woodoo

Andrey went back to work again, carefully adjusting the chair cloth so that it covered my legs as it should, and, five minutes later, when he brought the electric shaver into play, he allowed me another break for a second swig of vodka.

A smaller battery-operated shaver made its debut, then it was back to the scissors and 10 minutes into the cut an old-fashioned sharp blade razor was waved above my head. An interesting touch here was that after Andrey had used some sterilising solution on it, he whipped out a flame-thrower and gave the blade a fiery blast. It was enough to make Sweeney Todd jealous and me to reach for the vodka!

There was a little more scissor-work to do; he used a small clipper to trim around my Brezhnev-style eyebrows and remove any lingering reminders of my mutton chops and a few minutes later my transformation was complete. There had been one frightening moment when, in combing my fringe forward when it was still at its original length but after the sides of my head had been shaved, I looked into the mirror and thought I saw Adolf Hitler staring back at me, but we had gone past that stage, and it was now time to pay.

I downed the remains of my complementary vodka and took the glass back to the ‘bar’ (counter). “Thanks very much,” I said, and before you could say ‘the wife was giving me a reproving look’, the attractive woman behind the counter had offered to top up my glass. Well, how could I refuse!

The haircut cost me, in English money, £12, and I left the hairdressers well-pleased with the professionalism of the service, the end ~ or rather top ~ result, as well as feeling gratefully tipsy. A small gift of a bottle of shampoo was also a nice touch.