Dobleve

When we first moved to Granada 2 ½ years ago, I worried pretty much constantly about doing the “right” things and behaving in the “right” way in all manner of social, business (and other) situations. This is not because I believe that there is in fact any right way to behave but because I wanted to show respect for our new culture, our new peers, and our new community. To this end I watched and watched and watched. I eventually figured out (I think!) the most polite way to order beer or coffee, to ask for a check, to greet newcomers, and so on. For me, it’s fairly simple: in social situations women almost always greet everyone – even those they are meeting for the first time – with a kiss to each cheek. It’s possibly more complicated for men who also employ handshakes, slaps on the back and the occasional hug depending who they are greeting. We never really figured it out however because unlike me Brian never worried much about the “right” way to greet people and for well over a year just kissed everyone (women and men) he met on each cheek. At first this drew some complicated looks from people. We figured out that it was not necessarily “normal” but with his sincere and unabashed cheerfulness, no one seems to really mind anymore and they seem to have adapted to him as much as he’s adapted to them.

All of this becomes a bit more complicated when you introduce even more cultures, as is often the case with our large group of international friends in Granada. We host a fair number of parties and events at our house, and as often as not several guests arrive at the same time. This is the true test of the etiquette paranoid. The first person through the door could be Spanish, Italian, Dutch, British, Japanese, Swiss, or even, American. In a situation like this your guests may or may not follow the “when in Rome” philosophy and may still greet the way they do in their home country. I’ve found that some British people (but only some) do not like to be hugged or kissed for example. If I’ve read the body language correctly I’ve scared more than one Japanese guest in my home by leaning in for the double cheek kiss at the same time they start to bow at the waist. The most difficult of all of these however are the three kissers that start with the opposite cheek. In Granada, you always lean in to kiss a person’s right cheek and then you kiss the left. If everyone follows this it’s comfortable and passes without incident. However, if both people lean in the same direction your first contact is a big crack on the cheek bone. Once you’re off on the wrong cheek it’s nearly impossible to recover and on the most dramatic of these occasions I once nearly brained myself on my guest’s forehead.