Day 18 - Apeldoorn

You've got nice curls, Henk says the day we wandered the heide after our late lunch at their place. My typically fly-away hair is unbound by the usual hair band, held in place instead by a cap on a windless afternoon. It flows a handswidth down my upper back. And yes, it's curly. Many hairdressers over the years have fallen in love with my curls, though my intention in coming to see them is to have them taken off. Wild curls. Unruly. Tiresome.

I grew it long six or seven years ago as a last play with youthful exuberance. It was meant to last only a year or two. But for several years now, I've suffered the long-hair/short-hair debate that plagues not a few post-menopausal women as they watch their youth wither and fade like the proverbial late-autumn rose. I grow weary of the battle...even more so the challenge of managing long hair on a road trip. Most days it's stuffed under a hat or helmet and comes out looking like squashed spaghetti.

So as we round the corner of the street where our B&B resides I note the inconspicuous hair salon. Not your usual inner city style salon with their glitzy promises of Hollywood hair, but the corner shop. Where mom and grandma go to get their monthly 'do done. I'm getting it cut, I announce, impetuous but determined. Johan, my faithful interpreter, follows me in to organize an appointment. Which is today at 10:30am. It's a hot day, with nothing else planned, so first up is taking Sui's curls to the chopping block.

Only the friendly young hairdresser, chatty but too shy to speak English, tells Johan, who tells me, that she might recommend a bit longer than the short pixi cut I show her on Google Images ("Best Haircuts for Women Over 60"). She loves my curls. It's not what I want but my conviction falters. What if a pixi ends up with me looking like every other beleaguered 60+ woman out there? Fed up with looking cute, just give me something easy and practical. I relent.

She snips and cuts, scrunches and fluffs and I walk out the door with a head of mini curls and a bag of products to help maintain the wild-curl-girl look she's created. Johan's been a gem of support. But with my new look, his scruffy beard just doesn't cut it. I insist on some reciprocal action and we head into the $5/beard-trimming barber we passed last night. Time to get Johan's beard into shape. The surly Kurdish barber -- thick neck, fierce military hair, an arm's length of tattoos -- assigns the beard job to his young apprentice, who spends 20 minutes in deep concentration on Johan's face. A menagerie of sculpting tools is used to get every out-of-place hair -- from neck, ears, nose, and eyebrow -- removed. The surly boss calls out something that sounds like a reprimand, but his face breaks out in a broad grin and he repeats in broken English, "Ten years younger!" We all laugh. Ten Euros and Johan's face is spick and spam. We celebrate our shorn looks with cappuccinos and carrot cake at a nearby coffee house.

Holland is not known for its heat. Especially in June. But it is known for its high humidity. So when the unusual heat spike meets the typical moist air, the result is two sweaty bodies. In Australia I always say 28°C (82°F) is my ideal temperature. But when Apeldoorn hits the mark I'm a mess, sweat dripping every which way, landing me in a puddle of misery.

After a stroll through the Saturday markets, we dive into the cool spaces of the CODA Museum, unexpectedly free on this particular Saturday, and enjoy its Inside the Outside exhibition of nature photography. Later we sit under the shade of a massive oak on the cool grass in the Oranjepark and talk about what to do with the rest of our day.  We buy online tickets to a concert at the Orpheus Theatre, just opened for the season this weekend. Then we head to Buddha's Garden for an early dinner of Thai food.

The concert is by a popular Dutch duo, Nick and Simon, who play both original compositions and remakes of Simon and Garfunkel songs. It's not our preferred style, but no other music events are showing up on a Google search. Turns out, however, the music is great: two top entertainers with amazing voices, diction, and stage presence. And they jive really well together. It's an amazing concert and we're glad we went.