friendly or...too friendly?

France, evening

I just had a peeling off mask on my face. Together with the dead cells, the mask peeled off half of my face and lots of my hair too. I am so goofy....I think that my sister got all the feminine genes and I got what was left....

Anyway. Just yesterday I was reading a blog about how difficult is, especially when you are in a foreign country, to understand when a man is just friendly or when his being friendly passes the limit. And what happens to me today? On my way home, I stopped to greet a nice old lady who lives close by and with whom I talked already a few times. She was chatting from her balcony (balcony to balcony or balcony to street chats are pretty common here) with a woman and a guy on the street. The man, without saying hi, without saying anything to introduce himself, asked me: can I invite myself for dinner?
I was surprised, but I smiled as I thought he was a friend of the old lady and so he was probably joking, just to get involved in the conversation. I told him that if he counted on me to have something to eat, he chose the wrong person as I almost never cook. And he responded that it didn't really matter, as he eats very little and it was more for the company. I started to feel very uncomfortable and wanted to leave. But I also didn't want to be unfriendly, as the old lady is very nice.

In the next few minutes after this first exchange of sentences it came up a) that I am from Italy (and this seems to increase of about 80% my quotes with a foreign man) b) that I am from Tuscany (another 10% to add to my quotes) c) that the man would have liked to come home with me to keep talking about Tuscany and Florence and art with me (this because I was telling to the all of them how come that we had so many great artist working or from Tuscany).

At this point I got way more than uncomfortable. A person who you never saw before in your life keeps telling you that he wants to come home with you. How would you have felt in that situation at my place? I was not flattered at all. Beside, the man was probably at least 20 years older than I am. The old lady started to apologize for him, saying that he needs to grow up and that he talks too much. For me he absolutely went too far. So, from being a friendly person, I shifted immediately into a cold one, said au revoir (goodbye) and left.

After living for long time in civilized countries, like Germany, Holland and the USA, I forgot how pushy and disrespectful men can be in the South of Europe. I need to get back my cold look and definitively be less friendly with people I don't know.