In Which Susan Gets A Mani-Pedi, Cut And Color Ukrainian Style

Okay, first let me warn all of my male readers that they might want to stop right here and wait for the next entry. What follows is a very detailed and well illustrated description of my REAL adventure in the Ukraine - my first haircut, hair color and manicure and pedicure at Beatric on Pushkinskaya in Kharkiv. I was getting desperate - my roots would soon overtake the rest of my hair!! So we set the alarm for 7 a.m. (something we have never had to do here) so that I would have time to screw my courage to the sticking post before bravely marching into the salon, followed by Ed, the official photographer commissioned with task of documenting this momentous event. As I nervously entered the salon I had visions of what I would have to do for the rest of my time in Kharkiv after they finished with me here -- stay in bed with Belle and put a bag over my head (or maybe I could find a Burka here - I knew they were good for something!).



The receptionist, Olga, speaks French, so I showed her my precious photo cut out from a magazine (it's one of the women who works or worked at Eileen Fisher who they used in their ads once and she has the haircut that I want - actually, she has the face that I want and the haircut looks pretty good too!). I have been using this photo to illustrate the kind of haircut I want for about 3 years now. I also brought along a photo of me with my grandson, Allan, taken last April after a particularly good haircut and color treatment by Keiko. (Keiko is always good, but sometimes she's especially good.) I explained to Olga in French that I wanted the "coiffure" of the magazine picture, but the "couleur" of the photo of me. (I couldn't really use my own hair as Exhibit A for the color I wanted since it is so bleached out at this point.) She understood perfectly (I think). She introduced me to Irena (pronounced EERAYNA) who would be doing my mani-pedi (my mani-pedi was scheduled for 8:30 and my haircut for 11), and I explained that my choloveek (husband) would be taking photographs for an article I was writing about my experience there (this pleased her - I bet she thought it was for Vogue!).

Irena led me to a room where there was a chair that was almost like the kind you sit in when you go to the dentist. She filled a tub with warm water and something that made the water honey-colored, and left me to soak for awhile. Soon she came back and began to work on one foot. Now, I consider myself a connoisseur of good pedicures, and this one had a very promising beginning. First of all, all her tools were immaculate and set out on a white cloth, covered with another white cloth (again, just like the dentist!). She began to take off the polish, and used a new cotton pad for each toe, and two for the big toes - that's how you really get all the polish off. Most manicurists just use one piece of cotton for all 10 toes (not Teresa, of course). Not only that, she spent about 10 minutes per toe, not including smoothing out the heels and bottoms and my feet, and not including polish time. Even though Irena speaks no English (or so she says), she understands a little, and I managed to learn that Beatric has been open for 10 years, that she has been a manicurist for 5 years, and that she has been at Beatric for 2 years. But that was about as far as we got.

Irena brought out about 3 different reds, and with her approval I chose a color that I thought was very close to the "classic red" that I have worn for about 25 years now (but those of you who have seen and made note of my pedicures in the past can judge for yourselves - I'm talking to you Fara!). The toe guards that she uses are really good too - sturdier than the ones I'm used to - and then they have these fantastic slipper like things that they put on your feet and hook through your toe so that you can walk around in the salon and not mess up your manicure or be in your bare feet.

After the pedicure I followed Irena into the main room of the salon where I was to have my manicure, followed by the cut and color. It was now about 10 a.m., so she had an hour to do my nails (no polish, just buffing, please!). That's a very nice length for a manicure and, in my experience, about 4 times as long as the manicures you get in a shop (Teresa of course takes just as long as Irena did) - a pedicure in a shop, if they are really conscientious, takes about 40 minutes, and a lot of that is soaking time. So far I was most pleased. Again she spent about a lot of time, did a beautiful job on the cuticles, gave the nails just the shape they should have given my stubby nails and hands, and made them the perfect length (short!!). I couldn't believe my luck, just stumbling into this place and into Irena's incredibly capable hands. Oh, and the price - 100 Hrynas, or $20 - I haven't been to a shop in so long that I don't know what they charge any more, but I bet it's more than 20 bucks, and I bet they spend only about 1/4 of the time that she spent on my nails.

Coming up next was the haircut and color - that was another matter entirely. Oh, but I thought, a mani-pedi, big deal if they mess that up - in a couple of weeks everything has grown back and you can try someplace else. And, besides, I could wear shoes and not sandals, so no one would see my feet, and I could pretty much keep my hands out of sight too. But my hair - ohmygod - this is a very different story. This really can mess up your day (or your week, or your month!) - it's the frame for your face, and I really didn't want to spend the next four weeks in bed with Belle and a bag or burka on my head. I was NERVOUS.

After saying "dujeh dobreh" (very good) to Irena about a thousand times, I went over to Yulia (Julie) for my haircut. Now this required a great deal of consultation and, unfortunately, Olga was temporarily away from the salon and couldn't translate. Yulia found someone who spoke a little English and, by coincidence, she had a haircut very much like the one I wanted. Nevertheless, there was great confusion - did I want the color in the magazine photo I had? Nyet, nyet! Did I want one color or two? How the hell do you say "highlights" and "lowlights" in Ukrainian anyway????? Or in French for that matter. And then my eye caught sight of the aluminum foil used in highlights and I pointed to that and said "Tak Tak" (yes, yes - not as you might have thought, that that!) . Oh, they all said - highlights (only they said it in Ukrainian and I can't remember the word any more). Now came the discussion about whether I needed highlights now. No, I didn't think I needed them "chass" (at this time). I still had a lot of highlights left (they were done June 1st, just before we left the States), but my roots are a disaster I said (splitting my hair down the middle and bending over so that they could see just how big a disaster (I'd say about an inch and a half!) it was!
The color was mixed and then applied to the roots (oh god, that color looks awfully purple - I don't want any blue in my red!! - this is going to be a disaster, I know it!). Then she kind of mushed it around so that it blended in to the rest of my hair without a clear line of demarcation, but didn't completely cover all the existing highlights, etc. Hmmm, this looked very professional - but still, there's that purple tinge - it's quite worrying. Yulia then went off to do something else while I sat and tried to read, peering up occasionally to see if my whole head was turning purple. After a while the color began to turn to a kind of copper color, so I relaxed a little. After about an hour Yulia came back and led me to the sink (their sinks are much more comfortable - for me anyway - than ours are at home - there's much less strain on my neck and I can really relax), and washed out the color. When we got back to the chair (and the mirror) I took a peek, and it didn't look too bad. A little brighter than I'm used to, but it is summer, so that's okay, isn't it? Okay, maybe I won't have to buy the burka after all. Oh, but now comes the haircut, that's the really hard part - anyone can slap on some color, right?????

Yulia asked for the magazine photo again. She examined it for a few minutes, smiled at me and gave a thumbs up sign. The minute she began I could see that she really knew what she was doing. Not only had she picked a really good color formula for me, but she was snipping away at my hair in exactly the same way that Keiko does at home - little diagonal snips that look like a pinking shears was used on your hair. And then she took the blade of the scissors and used it to thin and lighten the weight of my hair so that it would stick up like it's supposed to do. I was really impressed with her technique. So now I completely relaxed. I told her that everything was really dujeh dobreh (very good), and let her go at it. And it was great!! It may be a tad short, but that's fine - it's hot, it's summer, and it'll grow. The important thing is that I think the shape is really good and that it will grow in really nicely - a real feat anywhere, but especially in the Ukraine where neither of us speaks the other's language. Thank the lord for magazines, photos and pantomime!! There was applause, shouts of encore! encore! from the gathering crowds, and flowers and kisses for the star of this little drama - Moi!
Oh, and the price??? $43 - yes $43 ($55 with the tip!). Can't beat that (well, you probably can beat that in Kharkiv, but I'm happy and I'm going back to Yulia for my next haircut and color in about a month).


When we got home (not before I arranged for a manicure with Elena next Friday!), we saw that the final photo was blurred by the light from the window behind me, so Ed took a final shot of the great job that Yulia had done. And that's it for the day - I was at Beatric for 5 hours (from 8:30 to 1:30) and then, working on the blog and this pictorial history of a day at the salon (after a bit of lunch, naturally!). And believe it or not, now it's time for dinner!

Oh, one more thing - for those of you who want even more detail - I just discovered that if you click on a photo in the blog it will open in a new window - much larger and with much more detail than appears in the blog.