Rudeness

I'm taking a course called "Intercultural Studies." It consist mainly of Estonians and Erasmus students comparing thoughts on whichever topic was given to us. Last week, we talked about what is rude. We were given a list of several things- smoking next to a person, talking loudly, eye contact, eating in public, now forming a proper line, being late. One amusing observation about lateness was that pretty much everyone could agree that it was rude, but no one could agree what constituted "late" to begin with.

So my homework this week was to conduct my own little social experiments. Do something I might consider to be rude and see what happens; alternately, go out of my way to be polite, and see if anybody says thank you.

I was deeply uncomfortable with the first half of the assignment and have put it off. I don't want to jump a line. I am NOT going to take up smoking just to see how people react. And I don't want to speak too loudly since I simply don't want to paint "foreigner" on my forehead in a public place- even though, as I have assured my mother several times, Tallinn is a perfectly safe place. I've tried leaving out "please" and "thank you," but I don't think anybody notices. I could leave out the pleasantries with the shopkeepers, but this isn't a place where you really make conversations with strangers anyways. How do you be rude in a society when you don't really know what constitutes rudeness? My only idea is to try speaking Russian to an ethnic Estonian...

The second one is a lot easier- if you continue to hold a door open, people will continue to walk through it, but no one will look at you, much less say anything. As it turns out, excessive eye contact is considered rude here, which explains why I've found so many shopkeepers to be rather shifty-eyed. Maybe my insistence on eye-contact with those with whom I was speaking... was I unwittingly completing the "be rude" portion of my assignment?