{Le Baiser de l’Hotel de Ville - Robert Doisneau}
The French love to kiss, I don’t mean locking lips and having a tongue sandwich with strangers but ‘baiser’ or ‘un bisous’ (that means kiss in French) is the way to say hello and goodbye over here. When I first arrived in France I was very sterotypically restrained and British when meeting others, prefering a solid handshake to getting all up in someones personal space and air kissing each cheek.
There are confusing rules behing all this as in some parts of the country you give one bise on each cheek starting with the left, others start on the right, some kiss three or even four times and some add a cheeky bottom pinch. Ok that last part isn’t true or maybe it is but I haven’t visited the right part of the country yet.
If the person you are meeting is a stranger/older than you and you don’t know them that well/not a close friend you usually shake their hand or just nod at them. Sometimes French men bise each other sometimes they don’t. On somedays my colleagues will ‘faire la bise’ with me and other days they just say bonjour. See how confusing this all is?! Some people embrace you as they bise, others just have their arms limply at their sides. When you go to a small party you are expected to go around and bise everyone, then when new people arrive they also do a tour of the room kissing away. This means from arriving to getting a drink down you it can take a while, not something us Brits are used to.
Working in a primary school it is commonplace for the children to run up to me as I arrive saying ‘Bonjour Katy – Bisous’ and I have to lean down to ‘faire la bise’ them. Imagine this back at home the teachers ‘kissing’ their students. I know it is not the same as a kiss on the lips but it is still strange experience.
To stop getting stressed out following ‘correct’ rules in fear of being rude or commiting a social faux pas I usually wait for others to decide if they want to ‘faire la bise’ with me rather than lunging at them being overlyfriendly, choosing the wrong cheek and ending up snogging them on the lips. Or you can just do the aloof reserved British thing we do so well and that gives off enough of a signal.
Once you get more confident with not just feeling like a Parisian-wannabe it’s quite friendly to greet people in this way, I actually like it now but there are times when I miss a big old bear hug!
