There are a lot of things that are unusual when you first come to a new country. Every traveler knows this after his first journey abroad, and is somewhat prepared for the following ones.
You know the language is different, as is the food, you may not be able to drink the tap water as you can at home, and in some countries taxis don’t have taximeters. All of these are easy in a way because they are obvious, and they occur in areas where you think about what you are doing when you are doing it. But there are things that are more difficult to come to grips with, what you might call automated cultural reflexes.
The first of these reflexes that caused confusion for me here in Ukraine was shaking hands. Ukrainians do shake hands – or so it first appeared, since the first few people I met all shook mine. Then some people didn’t, ignoring my outstretched hand, or did, but seemed very surprised about it. It actually took me about a day to figure out the pattern behind this: women do not shake hands here. Not with men and not amongst each other. Now this in itself was very surprising to me, and quite difficult, since even after I had realized the fact, my hand still went out automatically when meeting anybody, man or woman. Even more surprising and difficult to come to grips with was the fact that there seems to be no replacement ritual for greeting. Nods and smiles seem to be all there is, and I still find this somewhat difficult at times.
I soon found that male etiquette towards women differs in other respects as well. It is customary to hold doors open for them, to give them a helping hand in getting off the tram, and to help them into their coats and jackets. There is none of the western idea that this might belittle women, and it does have a certain old-fashioned charm. I found it relatively easy to adjust to this, even though I have lapsed into my less-gentleman’s ways every now and then. However, the fact that you more or less have to carry a woman’s bags makes you realize what advantages feminism has for men as well.
Text by Alex Godde, Germany
Photo by Pierre Jeanmougin, France
