The Handshake Game
What could be more simple than a handshake? In your own culture, very little. In a foreign culture, a lot of things, including differential calculus. I've written before about the difficulties of adapting to Polish kissing greetings, but the problems of brushing your lips against the cheeks of attractive females are nothing compared to the potential perils of grasping other men’s hands.
The handshake has a long history, but probably didn't become widely used in our part of Europe until a few hundred years ago. Anyone who has read the Internet will tell you that the handshake was invented as a method of showing strangers that you were not carrying a weapon — which is probably the silliest explanation I've heard for anything. If I was a primitive human and wanted to show another primitive human that I didn't have a sharpened flint in my hand, I would simply wave at him from a distance. Waiting until you are close enough to grab each other’s hands is a sure way of getting stabbed in the neck, or the hand. Anyway, hadn't anybody heard of pockets, or left hands, in those days?
No, the handshake is a gesture of close personal contact that you make only after you are sure the other guy isn't there to bash you on the head with a rock and steal your iPod. The handshake is a way of judging a stranger, or of reaffirming a friendly relationship, it's not a weapons check. If it was, those pat downs they give you at the airport after you make the metal detector go 'beep' would feel much less weird.
In the parts of the world where handshaking is common, which is less of the world than we Europeans imagine, there are two factors that differ enormously from country to country: frequency and strength. Handshake strength seems to be directly proportional to distance from the equator. The further north you go, the stronger the average male handshake. I shook some hands in a Mediterranean country a while ago and it was like handling boiled frankfurters. In Norway, by contrast, men habitually tear each other’s arms out and compare how far their blood spurts up the wall. Presumably, actually on the equator, men tickle each other lightly on the palm and giggle.
In Poland, like in the UK, there is a wide variation in handshake strength. Young boys are taught to shake firmly, to show that they are trustworthy, sober and heterosexual. I have no idea why some people disregard this law and offer you a hand like a cold pancake. On the other extreme are men who attempt to crush your finger bones, presumably to show that they are powerful and not to be crossed. This is about at convincing as a nine-year-old shouting: “Didn’t hurt!” after being slapped by his mum.
The big difference between Polish and UK handshaking is frequency. Polish men shake hands almost every time they meet. Popping into the kitchen to get a sandwich is a good enough reason to shake hands when you get back. In the UK, handshaking is a very formal gesture that most men only use with people they are meeting for the first time, or when meeting formal acquaintances again after not seeing them for several weeks. Male friends almost never shake hands, unless they have been apart for a long time. The only other times when male British friends shake hands are for exceptional congratulations, like becoming a father, or grave moments, such as agreeing to be somebody’s best man.
It’s difficult for Brits to get used to Polish handshaking customs: it seems too formal to shake hands every time you meet someone, and insincere when they want to shake yours 12 hours after you last saw them. But the real problems start when Brits living in Poland meet each other. Habit teaches us to stick our hands out, but deeper instincts tell us it is wrong. The result is fumbled handshakes, hands left hanging and inevitable embarrassment. If you see two Englishmen incompetently shaking hands in Poland, do not judge them; they are struggling with a cross-cultural problem that has no answer.
Jamie Stokes