If You Don’t Comb Your Hair, You’re Not a Woman

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I find it funny that people will say the craziest things when they think you don’t understand their language.

I was riding a train downtown this morning. Sundays in Germany tend to be quiet, so the train was almost empty on January 2nd. Besides me, there were only a few passengers.

So, I am riding on a train, minding my own business, looking outside the window at the park we are passing, when suddenly I hear the sounds of a familiar language. The Russian language. My mother tongue.

Living in Germany, you hear the Russian often. It’s not surprising, as Russians make up 1.7 % of the population in Germany, which is a lot. So I am used to hearing it.

Most of the conversations I hear are boring–“chicken… do we have chicken?”, “and then he said, and then I said,” “Nikolay, fuck you”–you know, these sorts of things. But not this one.

“Your hair looks messy,” says a voice to my right. “Have you combed it?”

With caution, I turn my head and see a woman and a teenage girl with a suitcase. The woman is probably in her fifties, and the girl is around sixteen or seventeen, but it is difficult to tell because both wear masks. It appears the woman is a grandmother or something of the sort, and the girl was visiting her for New Year’s.