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ETIQUETTE

Kiss me, I’m Swedish

Whatever happened to Swedish reticence? David Bartal contemplates a country in which man-hugs have become de rigeur and women think little of kissing each other on the mouth.

Published: 14 May 2008 09:56 CEST
Kiss me, I'm Swedish

Kissing etiquette isn’t what it used to be. Thats what I found when I was reunited with my dear sister in Los Angeles in April. She kissed me lightly on the mouth, as did my niece and even my second-cousin!

At first, I thought, hmm… this must be one of those extraordinary California things. In the United States, unconventional trends seem to start on the West Coast, and make their way eastward.

Folks who live in or near Hollywood have for decades been accustomed to an anemic cheek-to-cheek grazing, while uttering something that sounds like “mwouah.”

To be kissed on the cheek by a female relation, friend or acquaintance in America or Europe is nothing to get excited about. It just means you don’t smell too badly.

There aren’t any romantic implications to that kind of gesture, unless you start nibbling on someone’s ear. Similarly, this new lip-pecking is a sign of chaste affection, not an invitation to romance.

At the same time, show biz and other forms of pop culture have pushed the envelope when it comes to public displays of affection. I’m thinking of Madonna’s sloppy kiss with Britney Spears at a televised MTV awards ceremony a few years ago.

So what is the situation on the roof of Europe?

Traditionally, the bashful Swedes have guarded their personal space closely. “Stay at least one arm’s length away when greeting a Swede.” That’s the advice new immigrants to Sweden used to receive about dealing with the natives.

The Brits have traditionally also been cautious about body contact; a proper handshake or nod is effusive enough, thank you very much.

Nowadays, close male friends in Sweden routinely greet each other with bear hugs, not handshakes. Young moms in Sweden think nothing about kissing their kids on the lips. And some young women greet each other with a light brushing of lips, seemingly with no greater significance.

Obviously, some of the old taboos and inhibitions we inherited from our parents have fallen by the wayside.

The brave new world of unromantic kissing has also found its way into the political arena.

When former Left Party leader Gudrun Schyman stepped down a few years ago, she turned over her position to successor Ulla Hoffman with an affectionate lip-kiss, which was captured on camera. It wasn’t a Madonna love-fest, but rather daring by Swedish standards.

Previously, the most remarkable political kiss immortalized in a photograph was the enthusiastic lip-to-lip contact way back in 1979 of USSR leader Leonid Brezhnev and his East German comrade, Erich Honecker. That disturbing “solidarity kiss” was an image most of us would like to forget.

But political kissing isn’t solely the prerogative of the Left. In fall 2007, Ulrica Schenström, the top aide to conservative Swedish prime minister Fredrik Reinfeldt, was caught on camera having more than a few drinks, and kissing a male TV reporter who was not her husband.

She was forced to resign because she was officially on call that particular evening to help deal with eventual national emergencies. Thus, it was irresponsible to get wasted on that particular night. The on-camera kiss was a non-issue since both the politician and the journalist flatly denied any romantic involvement.

A new etiquette for kissing appears to be evolving on both sides of the Atlantic Ocean. The rules of the game are fuzzy in my mind. But it would seem that for some people in some situations a lip-to-lip kiss is little more than a hug or hearty handshake.

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OPINION AND ANALYSIS

OPINION: Why Germans’ famed efficiency makes the country less efficient

Germans are famous for their love of efficiency - and impatience that comes with it. But this desire for getting things done as quickly as possible can backfire, whether at the supermarket or in national politics, writes Brian Melican.

Published: 24 May 2023 10:38 CEST
OPINION: Why Germans' famed efficiency makes the country less efficient

A story about a new wave of “check-outs for chatting” caught my eye recently. In a country whose no-nonsense, “Move it or lose it, lady!” approach to supermarket till-staffing can reduce the uninitiated to tears, the idea of introducing a slow lane with a cashier who won’t sigh aggressively or bark at you for trying to strike up conversation is somewhere between quietly subversive and positively revolutionary – and got me thinking.

Why is it that German supermarket check-outs are so hectic in the first place?

READ ALSO: German supermarkets fight loneliness with slower check outs for chatting

If you talk to people here about it – other Germans, long-term foreign residents, and keen observers on shorter visits – you’ll hear a few theories.

One is that Germans tend to shop daily on the way home from work, and so place a higher premium on brisk service than countries where a weekly shop is more common; and it is indeed a well-researched fact that German supermarket shopping patterns are higher-frequency than in many comparable countries.

Bavarian supermarket

A sign at a now-famous supermarket in Bavaria advertises a special counter saying “Here you can have a chat”. Photo: picture alliance/dpa | Karl-Josef Hildenbrand

Another theory is that, in many parts of the country (such as Bavaria), supermarket opening hours are so short that there is no other way for everyone to get their shopping done than to keep things ticking along at a good old clip.

The most simple (and immediately plausible) explanation, of course, is that supermarkets like to keep both staffing and queuing to a minimum: short-staffing means lower costs, while shorter queues make for fewer abandoned trolleys.

German love of efficiency

Those in the know say that most store chains do indeed set average numbers of articles per minute which their cashiers are required to scan – and that this number is higher at certain discounters notorious for their hard-nosed attitude.

Beyond businesses’ penny-pinching, fast-lane tills are a demonstration of the broader German love of efficiency: after all, customers wouldn’t put up with being given the bum’s rush if there weren’t a cultural premium placed on smooth and speedy operations.

Then again, as many observers not yet blind to the oddness of Germany’s daily ‘Supermarket Sweep’ immediately notice, the race to get purchases over the till at the highest possible rate is wholly counter-productive: once scanned, the items pile up faster than even the best-organised couple can stow away, leaving an embarrassing, sweat-inducing lull – and then, while people in the queue roll their eyes and huff, a race to pay (usually in cash, natch’).

In a way, it’s similar to Germany’s famed autobahns, on which there is theoretically no speed limit and on which some drivers do indeed race ahead – into traffic jams often caused by excessive velocity.

Yes, it is a classic case of more haste, less speed. We think we’re doing something faster, but actually our impatience is proving counterproductive.

German impatience

This is, in my view, the crux of the issue: Germans are a hasty bunch. Indeed, research shows that we have less patience than comparable European populations – especially in retail situations. Yes, impatience is one of our defining national characteristics – and, as I pointed out during last summer’s rail meltdown, it is one of our enduring national tragedies that we are at once impatient and badly organised.

As well as at the tills and on the roads, you can observe German impatience in any queue (which we try to jump) and generally any other situation in which we are expected to wait.

Think back to early 2021, for instance, when the three-month UK-EU vaccine gap caused something approaching a national breakdown here, and the Health Minister was pressured into buying extra doses outside of the European framework.

This infuriated our neighbours and deprived developing countries of much-needed jabs – which, predictably, ended up arriving after the scheduled ones, leaving us with a glut of vaccines which, that very autumn, had to be destroyed.

A health worker prepares a syringe with the Comirnaty Covid-19 vaccine by Biontech-Pfizer. Photo: John MACDOUGALL / AFP

Now, you can see the same phenomenon with heating legislation: frustrated by the slow pace of change, Minister for Energy and the Economy Robert Habeck intended to force property owners to switch their heating systems to low-carbon alternatives within the next few years.

The fact that the supply of said alternatives is nowhere near sufficient – and that there are too few heating engineers to fit them – got lost in the haste…

The positive side of impatience

This example does, however, reveal one strongly positive side of our national impatience: if well- directed, it can create a sense of urgency about tackling thorny issues. Habeck is wrong to force the switch on an arbitrary timescale – but he is right to try and get things moving.

In most advanced economies, buildings are responsible for anything up to 40 percent of carbon emissions and, while major industrials have actually been cutting their CO2 output for decades now, the built environment has hardly seen any real improvements.

Ideally, a sensible compromise will be reached which sets out an ambitious direction of travel – and gets companies to start expanding capacity accordingly, upping output and increasing the number of systems which can be replaced later down the line. Less haste now, more speed later.

The same is true of our defence policy, which – after several directionless decades – is now being remodelled with impressive single-mindedness by a visibly impatient Boris Pistorius.

As for the check-outs for chatting, I’m not sure they’ll catch on. However counterproductive speed at the till may be, I just don’t see a large number of us being happy to sacrifice the illusion of rapidity so that a lonely old biddy can have a chinwag. Not that we are the heartless automatons that makes us sound like: Germany is actually a very chatty country.

It’s just that there’s a time and a place for it: at the weekly farmer’s markets, for instance, or at the bus stop. The latter is the ideal place to get Germans talking, by the way: just start with “About bloody time the bus got here, eh?” So langsam könnte der Bus ja kommen, wie ich finde…

READ ALSO: 7 places where you can actually make small talk with Germans

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