After settling into our AirBnb in Berlin, my two-week old
nail polish was driving me crazy - I never pack remover when I travel,
fearing a toxic leak. I had noticed several nail places near our AirBnb so I knew
where to go to get these nails taken care of. After Stuffy left to pick up his
rental car, I headed out, across Birkbuschstrasse to “Pink Nails.” There was a
sign outside with pink writing listing services and prices. (I love that the
German word for price, preis, is pronounced the same as the English word. It’s
handy.)
Inside, two slightly younger than middle-age women were sitting at pink nail tables. One of them was working on a client’s nails and
the other was arranging salon things. Mirrors behind them had pink ribbons hanging from them. I greeted the women and had Google translate ready
to show them: Können Sie meine Nagellack entfernen? They read this translation on my phone and asked to see my nails/Nagel. The one without a customer had curly bright orange
hair, which must’ve been an error in the Pink Nails shop. Her multicolored
floral tattoos were visible on her exposed shoulder as she took my hand and
held it aloft at several different angles to examine the polish. She announced, “Das
ist nicht nagelpolitur, das ist shellac.” I responded, “Nein, das ist nicht
shellac.” Then the other woman got involved and she also concluded my nails
were shellacked. I asked “Was ist das preis?” to have the substance taken off my fingernails, and my clinician asked, “Zehn? (10?)”
and I nodded in agreement, asking if she could file them as well (a word that
seems to be a cognate in German: feilen).
Thus, the work
finally began. The foil came out, the cotton part dipped in pink-toned polish remover and applied to each
finger. My clinician and I spoke a mix
of English and German to each other, becoming more comfortable with each
utterance. She asked, “Wohnen-Sie auf Steglitz?” and I said no, “Ich wohne auf
USA, Pittsburgh, PA.” She asked why I was in Berlin, and I told her because I
have eine cousine here and I am auch a tourist. She told me her English was bad
and I disagreed, telling her I wished my German was better. As she filed my
nails, the dust fell into a cleverly-designed hole in the center of the table, covered with a
craftsman-design circular piece of metal. She said she was never good with
language, that she preferred mathematics or geometry. We finished up and as I
thanked her, she thanked me as we agreed that we had understood each other, auf
Deutsch und auf Englisch.
It felt so good
to have polish- or shellac-free, clean nails, shaped into perfect little squares. But
most of all, it felt good to have had a rewarding interaction with a German woman who was striving to make the
world a prettier, pinker place.
