Hello Goodbye

For the most part, Americans are really friendly.  It’s true.  We will talk to you if you sidle up to the bar and sit down by yourself.  By the end of the evening you will feel you’ve made a friend.  We’re fairly open, engaging, and ready to hear the other side of things.  (But be prepared, many Americans will also be ready to tell you the other side of things.) Bars in Madrid are not quite like that.  From what I can tell thus far, people tend to go to the bar with their friends and stick to that group for the evening.  Makes sense in its way, just as the American bar scene makes sense.  Good and bad.

But before this becomes a post about alcohol, let me get back to friendliness.  Where does it cross into politeness?  What does it share with simple openness and comfort in one’s own existence?  (internal editor sighing, fingertips reeling it back in.)

The Spanish have this wonderful custom of saying buenos dias every time they walk into a room or pass someone on the street.  And saying hasta luego when they leave a room full of people.

It’s baffling for an American.  For a while there, I thought everyone knew everyone in the world.

When I figured out that this was just a custom, I was still at a loss as to when it was appropriate to greet people in the street and when I could feign exhaustion from greeting everyone in the street.

But you know, it’s really nice, this Spanish thing.  If you are eating in a restaurant and the table next to you gets up to leave, someone in that group will undoubtedly bid you a good day.  It’s only natural isn’t it?  I mean, you were neighbors for a meal, you partook of the same air and added to the atmosphere.

I cannot say that the Spanish custom of acknowledgement is better or not as good or equal to American openness.  Neither gives me all that I want.  Americans still pretend the people on the sidewalk do not exist and the Spanish still don’t seem to care about getting to know the person next to them. (Forgive me these unseemly generalizations.)

But both lean towards the common idea that we are all in this world together.  And that’s easy to understand.