Nicities for newbies

You’re staying in the region for the first time there a few things I might be able to tell you to save you some bother or embarrassment.

La bise: The dread of reserved Anglo Saxons. In l'Herault you kiss women three times on the cheeks when meeting in a social context. Occasionally even men do this sometimes with other men. All this kissing can reach comic proportions in parties with lots of people coming and going all the time.

Bonjour/Aurevoir:
People always say it: as you come in or go out of a store, to the bus driver as you get on and off the bus, even to rooms full of strangers in waiting areas.

Flowers:
The alternative to wine or chocolate as a house gift when invited “chez les Françaises”. I seldom go this route myself because I am a fan of both wine and chocolate and I know nothing of flowers except that you do not offer the French Chrysanthemums because for some reason this particular plant is reserved exclusively for funerals. In other words, this is not the kind of gift you want to bring to a French friend in the hospital.

Butter:
Don't put butter on your bread outside of breakfast unless you are eating it with oysters. If you ask for butter to have with your bread before dinner you will recieve it along with all the scorn of the kitchen staff who believe that you are ruining your pallet for the meal.

Public spaces:
It is perfectly okay to hold noisy demonstrations and block the traffic but not to be shirtless in public. Drinking on the street outside of terraces is generally tolerated by the police; (though there are occasional random crack downs and fines) it is however looked down upon by the public.

Drinking:
Look in the other person's eyes when you clink glasses during a toast. Hold the stem of the glass when you drink wine. When you order a wine at a restaurant they will generally get the most senior man at your table to taste it first, this is not to determine if you like the wine or not but whether or not the bottle is corked.

Cheese:
A cheese course is often taken between the dinner and the dessert. In North America I have sometimes had cheese as an appetizer but I have never seen cheese served substantively before a meal in France. In France it is typically considered to be a dish apart and too heavy and complicated for the pallet before the main meal. I don't mean to give the impression that the French are uniformly strict about this but there is an order in which to attack the cheeses. The rule is mildest to strongest. There is also a manner in which to cut the various types of cheese. Roquefort for example should be cut in an angular manner so as to avoid one person having all the blue and another getting only the white. There are even different implements for different types of cheese. I still don't understand all the subtle differences so when in doubt I ask my hosts. Usually they reply with a shrug and say "whatever you like" however I have noticed that they possess 25 different kinds of cheese implements all recently polished and I can't help but wonder if I am not actually deeply wounding them with my arbitrary methods of butchering their lovely cheeses.

Coffee:
Having milk with your coffee in France is like having a parrot on your shoulder. You are seen as something of an eccentric. It is also a flashing neon light telling everybody that you are a foreigner, it's okay, they already know. If you want a normal sized coffee with milk, you order a "grand crème", and for a small you say "noissette".

The bill/L'addition:
You will wait until your old age pension comes in if you are expecting the waiter at a restaurant to bring you the bill, so ask for it when you’re ready to go. You can sit as long as you want at a cafe with a big book and no one will bother you except to ask you for a light (they will say "fire" if they think they can speak English) or a smoke or just some spare change.

That's all I can think of right now, many of things have become automatic to me so I forget to explain things when visitors come here. If anyone can think of anything else please add a comment.