If you ever find yourself passing through Kirov Region, don’t even think about getting a haircut. A local girl (incidentally, the winner of the regional hairdressing competition—the diploma was hanging on the wall) butchered my hair so horribly it was beyond belief. If this is the best stylist in the region, what on earth do the worst ones do? If you’ve seen *Taras Bulba*, just picture Andriy. That’s what I looked like when I walked out of that elite Kirov beauty salon. No wonder I became the target of merciless mockery from “Governor Belykh’s team.” The number of jokes made at my expense ran into the millions. But the worst part was that when I got home, my wife subjected me to even more vicious ridicule. For two days, she called me nothing but “the Kirov demob” (a slangy reference to a freshly discharged conscript). To be fair, in the end she took pity on me and, picking up the clippers, delivered a mercy blow to my hair. So now I’ve got a proper Moscow haircut again.