For the past 10 days since my arrival, I’ve been disturbed at my inability to properly greet people. I don’t remember having this problem in Germany or France. Must be a Swiss thing.
And quite honestly, it’s not the type of situation I’ve ever thought to analyze, but there’s a window of opportunity as you approach someone on the street to exchange greetings. I know it works here because about 1 in 10 times this past week, I got a “Grüezi”--that’s Hello--from a stranger. And I couldn’t figure out for the life of me what I did differently than all the other times of feeling shafted.
But today was the day. Not only did I have 100% success rate of 8 out of 8—yes, I did count—but I also deduced what it must be. Today, being the beautiful day that it was, I wore sunglasses. So, my theory is it’s the eye contact! And more precisely, the timing of it. I still don’t know at which point the Swiss eyes need to meet the one they're greeting, but I’m pretty sure it’s not the same as an American! I think it’s much earlier.
Anyhow, it’s such a nice feeling to get a jovial greeting back even though I’m fairly certain that I was the initiator every time; but that’s progress, right? At least it’s supposed to be sunny the next two days. That gives me time to practice, and maybe I can catch on to this timing thing so that I’ll be able to get in some warm greetings for the not-so-sunny days! 😎
