BISOUS!

One of my favourite words in French is "Bisous", probably for the same reason that "chocolate" is also a good word because it conjures up a nice image or sensation. Bisous means a kiss, whether it be a kiss on the lips or a real kiss on the cheek. It is also seen as a term of endearment or of sending your best wishes to someone. At the end of letters to friends and family, in England we sign of "love and hugs" in France they will say "bises", "bisous", "gross bisous" "je t'embrasse" or "je t'embrasse fort". Note that this is strictly between friends, you would not put it on the end of an email to your boss! In the same way that girls analyse texts from guys to see how many "x" they put at the end, the same attention has been given to texts from French guys to decide whether "bises" may be less sincere than "je t'embrasse".

Now we all know that in France when you greet someone you are required to kiss them on the cheeks, from once, twice up to six times (!!) depending on certain areas of France. This tradition is something I find both enjoyable and at times completely bizarre! In Bordeaux for example, you have to kiss people twice (easy enough!). However in Montpellier it's three times and in Paris its sometimes four times and sometimes twice. The problem is when you meet someone who is say for example from Tours, where it is four times, and you are in Bordeaux, do you kiss twice because you are in Bordeaux or four times because the person comes from Tours?? Also when do you go for "bises" and when do you go for hand shake. Obviously when out with friends, if there is another friend who is introduced to the group then they "fait les bises à tout le monde" and kiss everyone who is present, but in a work situation it kind of depends.

When I studied in Bordeaux, among my group of friends, when we arrived bleary eyed for our morning lectures, we greeted each other with "les bises". Given that we were quite a large group, if you arrived late and the group was still hanging around waiting to go in to the lecture hall, then you had to go and give "les bises" to everyone. This was sometimes not a bad thing as several of the guys in the group were rather good looking and I can't say I minded being given kisses every morning from my handsome friends!! Of course this ritual reoccurred each time we met, whether it be for classes or social events. Sometimes it's a logistical nightmare because the person may be sat at a table in which case they usual stand up so that you can both lean across the table to kiss each other, trying not to send the glasses or other objects on the table flying! Guys have it easy because if it is all guys in the group then all they have to do is shake hands, girls have to kiss everybody, whether male or female. This becomes delicate as sometimes you would meet with a group of people consisting of a mix of your friends, people you don't know or even people you know but don't actually like. In which case there is a different kind of "bises". Sometimes you do a genuine kiss, maybe with a hand lightly touching the arm, other times you do a plain air kiss and if it is someone you don't particularly like, the facial expression changes to being either a sort of disinterested expression. The other kind of kissers, is what my friend used to call "face snoggers" who give you a lovely wet kiss, kind of like what your granny used to do and you have to stand there talking to them just waiting for the moment when you can wipe your cheek! Whilst the French have the whole cheek kissing thing down to a fine art, I have met more than a few "face snoggers"

But what happens when you really care about the person or you are really happy to see them? Well the tendency in the UK (and in the US as an American friends explained to me) is a nice big hug. But many of my French friends are not huggers! In fact, several of them, through years of friendship I have finally trained to hug (and let's not go into the difference between those who hug and those who cuddle!). The French find hugs invasive whilst we find kissing unnecessary and sometimes just as invasive.

After having lived in Bordeaux for several years I knew that many people, through study or work, that a simple Saturday afternoon shopping trip down the rue St Catherine would be frequently interrupted by stopping to say hello to people. Whereas in England, when you see someone you know you just give them a way and keep on going (if you can't stop), in France you feel rude if you don't stop to do some kisses, and as you have stopped you have to say hello and ask how they are so you end up stopping for a good five minutes or so.

Another difficultly I have encountered with the whole "bises" business is when you work with both French people and English people. In a formal working environment you greet your colleagues with a formal handshake. Even if there is no physical contact involved, you MUST go round in the morning and say hello to people, especially if later in the day you are going to need their help. If you don't see them in the morning and you bump into them in the afternoon you have to say "je t'ai dit le bonjour?" before you begin to say anything else or else you could be seen to be rude. With closer colleagues you "fait les bises". The problem I found was when I worked with British or American colleagues, we didn't feel the need to "faire les bises" but then it seemed rude if I was going to kiss my Spanish or French colleagues, to leave the British colleagues out. So it was mutually decided to "when in Rome…". This led to situations where we would end up kissing each other in greeting even when there were no French colleagues around. Eventually, even though to begin with this whole ritual was awkward and seemed unnecessary, we got so used to it that when I went home for Christmas I found myself making a physical movement towards friends to give them a kiss. Luckily they were friends who interpreted the gesture as the beginnings of a hug and therefore reciprocated. Some friends teased me about the way I now kissed as I didn't give "proper" kisses but rather snobbish air kisses!

The most embarrassing situation is when to kiss and when not to kiss. I think I'm used to it now so can interpret the body language and prepare to be kissed but there have been some fairly embarrassing moments, people going in the wrong direction resulting in what looks like a strange kind of dance (generally, except in the south of France, you go left), brushing of lips! I'm quite happy with just two kisses, one on each cheek, it's perfectly acceptable and doesn't take too long. Once I met an acquaintance of a friend when I was in Bordeaux who was himself from Paris. He absolutely insisted that we kiss four times even though I pointed out that we were in Bordeaux and that it was two times.

Anyway, like I said, once you get the hang of it, it's quite nice but even so, sometimes I wish they would put a sign up outside each town saying "here, we kiss three times", because if not, you could easily end up head butting someone!