Two kisses in Europe

I've never quite managed to get a grasp of the cheek-to-cheek kissing protocol in Europe.

"It's easy," Macklaine had told me when I was living in London (although after that he confessed to having been confused about it himself). "In England it's one kiss, in the rest of Europe it's two kisses, except in Switzerland, where it's three kisses."

Despite knowing this rule, I've made an inelegant bungle of things on several occasions, because in reality the kissing game is a tip-toeing ritual where each party is trying to tentatively intuit just how many cheek-pecks the other is expecting.

Today was the last day of my Spanish classes, and as we were leaving, one of my friends leaned in to do the conventional quick two-pecks-on-the-cheek goodbye. Except that he kind of caught me mid-sentence, and caught off-guard as I was, my instinctive response was to take a step back and keep talking. So he ended up kissing into the blank spot of air which used to be me.

Yikes, I thought.

Then I quickly calculated: He's French, that means two. And leaned forward for the second cheek-peck, except that by this time he had assumed I wasn't into this game, and had stepped back himself. So I ended up proferring my cheek to nothingness.

There was a brief awkward pause.

"Ermm," he said.
"Ermm," I concurred.
There really was nothing else to be said.

I'm off to Germany tomorrow. Where a whole new world of cheek-kissing adventure awaits me.