How to meet strangers in big cities (or anywhere)
Many of you have asked, on many different occasions, how I go about meeting new people. Or strangers. The good kind.
It’s something, I have to confess, I’m good at. I could be all coy and say that necessity has forced me to hone this ability (I wander the world alone and have to find ways to connect with the beat of life somehow). But I’ve been like it all my life. As a kid I would get in trouble at church when I’d turn around and seek eye contact with the people sitting behind me. I’d befriend kids in parks and adults at supermarkets. I’ve always been socially awkward and I didn’t have many real friends when I was younger. Just humans I made eye contact with and could ask questions of.
I’m not sure how to write a guide as such, other than to perhaps tap out a bunch of mindsets and philosophical approaches that guide me. And illustrate with some examples of recent meet-ups, both romantic and serendipitous, that I’ve had here in Paris.
And then hope they land with you helpfully.
Really, this is my number one tip. Looking at people fully is the artful edge of meeting strangers. It’s the practice. I like to look up from the street (and my phone) and into people’s faces and have long landed in trouble for it (see church tale above). In Anglo and Scandi countries it doesn’t go down so well. But in Latin-based joints it does.
Paris is Ground Zero for eye contact. Which is why I’m here, I think. The chairs at the cafes faces outwards and locals drink coffee as a decoy for their real pursuit - looking at people. People walk, and rarely drive, here. They interface.
Life happens on the street and the city’s culture is all about protocols and rituals that steer the populace to greet each other. When you enter a store or a post office or whatever it’s de rigueur to say (in a sing-song voice) bonjour! and merci a vous! and bonne journée!. When you bump into someone, or you ask a favour, it’s the same sing-song voice and polite protocols. With eye contact.
And, honestly, the French rudeness everyone speaks of? It mostly surfaces (in my experience) when you fail to play this social etiquette game. If you don’t connect properly, the French are affronted.
I find here in Paris, but also in Greece and Italy and other parts of Europe, that when I make eye contact with people I am generally greeted with a smile and often a comment of connection. This applies equally with old ladies, homeless people, security guards, exhausted wait staff and so on.
I’ll give a case in point (the love note bit).
The other night I was out with my friend Jeanine and her little boy Beau. We’d been on a ferris wheel. Then it pissed down with rain. We sat at a terrace to eat, bedraggled. At the table next to us was a bunch of young men. I looked at them, curiously, trying to get their measure. I think most of my friends are used to me doing this; some accuse me (perhaps fairly) of generalising (because I always report back with a broad-brushstroke assessment). One of the guys (they were definitely being guys, and were at least a decade, possibly two, younger than me) smiled at me and pointed at the yellow coat I was wearing and mouthed in French, “I like your jacket”. I smiled back, Merci (!). An hour passed; we were stuck at the cafe due to the the rain being biblical, or at least Sydney-like.
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