Mom called at the end of April, when I was still looking at the tickets, and said that she had booked me a spot at Galya's studio on May 3rd and May 10th, because in June everything is already set with Galya; she wasn't going to wait for me to decide on the dates, she wasn't going to wait. I didn't know how many days I would spend at home and whether the children would come with me; the two facials were already on my mom's calendar with the same firmness with which her own tests are there.
The exchange rate today is eighty-three kopecks per dollar; I'm calculating everything in rubles below that, although I don't have to do that anymore; I've been here for twenty years, and Kirill always laughs at this habit.
The final appointment before departure
A week before the flight, I go to Mass in Tatin to the usual routine. I’m not ready to fly for two days with a long layover, and the first few days at home are still about mom, grandma, and the time difference. Mass takes two seats in the studio, without a sign and no front desk; the registration is only on Instagram, and we always talk about the same thing: that the Americans have finally tried Russian manicure and consider it an upgrade, and they write to her in direct message in English. Seventy-five for structural gel and fifteen in tip money because twenty percent here is sacred even in a Russian studio where your master and the coffee are poured from your own Turkish coffee machine. Cash or card? Card, and at the end I catch myself for the ninth time that ninety in my head has already turned into seven and a half thousand rubles, and for that, my mom’s manicure artist in the center would have done the same thing five times, at a price of half a thousand for the treatment with the coating. I know that renting in the Orange County area and renting in the center of Yekaterinburg are two different rentals, and that Mass takes her own hands seriously. Knowing and not counting it are two different things.
A week on Malysheva
The first cleaning was on June 3rd, on the second day after the arrival, when the face still lives according to California time. Galla works the same way as they did in California fifteen years ago and as almost no one works there now: ultrasound, then an hour and a half with hands, then a mask and a lecture about what the Californian sun does to the skin if it is not helped. Three six hundred rubles, just over forty dollars in dollars, a red face until the evening of the next day. A week later, everything repeats. One cleaning after a year under this sun is never enough for Galla.
Here I must admit that I made a big mistake. I have Marina in Irvine, whom I’ve been going to for a third year for a facial with a price tag of thirty-five dollars, but last year I wanted something quick and trendy, and I went for a Hydra Facial for two hundred and fifty-five dollars because everyone was doing it. The machine does what it does and it’s good; my skin feels like it’s been off for a week after the treatment; there’s no point arguing about it here. Just my pores need a different approach—using your hands, and without rushing—and at an American aesthetic clinic, the price tag for that treatment is either zero or an extra extraction time of twenty dollars. It was my mistake, and when I told Galya about it, she just nodded and asked me not to move.
There was a rift between two cleanings. Olya, my classmate, took me to her hairdresser on Radishcheva Street. She said that for that kind of money in Irven they could at best just dye my roots, and she was right: three and a half hours in a chair, seven thousand rubles, at the exchange rate of eighty-four rubles, whereas my hairdresser in Irven charges one hundred and twenty without tips. A year and a half later, when I was in California, they asked me where I had gotten my hair done; I answered «in Yekaterinburg,» and no one believed me.
Oksana's voice on the way from the airport
I came back with a new face and fresh hair, and the first voice message I turned on in the car was from Oksana from Plano, who has been in Texas for four years and still measures everything by Moscow. She dropped a screenshot of the price from the salon in Moscow City, where her friend is getting her hair done, with the comment «and you still complain»: roots are twelve thousand, and when I converted them to dollars, it came out one hundred forty-four, more expensive than my hair in Irvine. I stared at this screenshot for a minute in the traffic light. So the cheapness that everyone talks about lives in Yekaterinburg, despite its population of one and a half million, while Moscow has long since fallen out of this formula.
How much does it cost: Oringzh District, Yekaterinburg, Moscow
Open prices of studios and aggregators, August 2026. Rubles are recalculated based on the Central Bank exchange rate of 83.28.
| Service | Orange County, $ | Yekaterinburg, ₽ ($) | Moscow City, premium, ₽ ($) |
|---|---|---|---|
| Manicure with coating, Russian technique | 65–80 for a master, removal of someone else's work +35 | 1,300–1,700 at the master (16–20), 3,500 in the network with removal and design (42) | not checked |
| Coloring the roots | 90–120 | 1 300–4 000 (16–48) | 12 000 (144) |
| Complex coloring, balayage, airbrushing | 175–400 | 5 500–9 000 (66–108) | 26,500 (318), average length |
| Cleaning at a beautician | 105–135 exit with cleaning, 199–255 hydrafacial | 2,500–5,500 combined, average 3,600 (30–66, average 43) | not checked |
Tips in the US are 15–20% extra; they are not included in the price. In Brooklyn, a Russian manicure with a top coat costs 50–65 dollars. Prices vary from master to master and change; it’s best to check before traveling.
What I brought back, besides the suitcase
My conclusion is this: it’s not about saving money. A flight across half the world doesn’t pay for any cleaning. The manicure and the roots stay here, at Masha’s and the hairstylist’s, every four or five weeks, and I pay my ninety-two dollars because I don’t want to fly to get them done. Cleaning and complicated coloring are left until I arrive, and that’s already a habit, like chocolate from the airport for children and a call to grandma from the waiting line for boarding. The difference between the two cities is in the check, not in the hands. Masha’s hands are no worse than Galina’s; it’s just that the rent is different. I won’t stop counting. My mom counted every penny at the check-in desk, and I’m counting, only now in two currencies. And for the next trip, my mom, as always, has already booked me for two dates with Galina, which I don’t know yet myself.
