ERROL PARKER | Editor-at-large | Contact
Though English is her only language and she hasn’t ridden a bicycle since she was seven, a spritely South Betootanese woman has taken the plunge and moved to the capital of world culture – Berlin.
But one thing that wasn’t in the tourist brochures, that wasn’t in the Lonely Planet guide, was the fact that she’d be forced to get bangs cut into her head moments after getting off the plant at Tegel Airport.
Ushered away, efficiently, down a series of corridors and tunnels, Marcia Greensloe found herself in a queue with other young women from around the world right in the bowels of Berlin’s largest air hub.
“It soon dawned on me why we were all there. None of us had edgy haircuts, we didn’t have the bangs you needed to get into the country. I lied on my Arrival Card and said I did,” she said.
“Big mistake.”
Soon it was the 24-year-old’s turn in the barber’s chair and in a matter of minutes, she barely recognised herself in the mirror.
“I looked like Uma Thurman in Pulp Fiction. We all did. I thought you came to Berlin to be an individual, to find out who you really are?”
“How can you do that if you all have the same haircut and suddenly start riding push bikes everywhere? You can’t! I should’ve just stayed in New Farm, that was edgy enough for me.”
And with that, the former leasing agent was forcibly removed from the crude hairdressing salon under Tegel airport and cast out onto the street beside the taxi rank to start her new life.
More to come.
