There's too much kissing (of the peck-on-the-cheek-in-greeting variety) in this country. I have no problem with kissing people hello and/or goodbye, but I would prefer to choose who I kiss and not feel obliged to kiss everyone (or it seems like everyone) all the time out of a sense of obligation. And do we really have to kiss so many times? Once is fine, twice seems kind of affected (because in Australia it would probably be thought so, and I can't really be expected to have shaken all the old prejudices) and three times (which is the way to go here) is completely over the top. I can happily fake my way through a single kiss of greeting, but if I don't really want to kiss someone hello it's hard to maintain the "it's so nice to see you again!" look for the time it takes to do the obligatory three kisses.
And everyone who doesn't want to kiss you wants to shake your hand! Lordy. So it seems the only options are overly friendly or overly businesslike. Whatever happened to saying "hi" and smiling in a non-committal manner?
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2 comments:
I can't stand all the kissing here, either. Fortunately they only kiss twice in Italy. Three times is just wrong.
During cold and flu season I always try to avoid saying hello and goodbye to people, but of course it never works. They wouldn't understand it anyway, everyone here thinks you get sick from going out without a scarf or not drying your hair after you wash it.
I saw a friend the other day and he refused to kiss me because he had a cold. Which was nice of him.
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