A Toast!!

I've learned a couple things about 'the toast' while we've been here. Some of it may be folklore but this is what I've heard from my French buddies here at work.

As it turns out, we do a lot of toasting at work. There is drinking at lunch and then drinking again around 4pm everyday. However, we NEVER drink in the morning. We draw the line there.

Shortly after arriving here I was told about the importance of looking someone in the eyes when toasting with them. This was explained to me as being as somewhat of a common custom here in France but a very serious custom in Germany. If you look down or just don't acknowledge a person, eye to eye, in Germany, it's considered very disrespectful. The guys here tell me that if eye contact isn't made here, you could be cursed with 7 years of no sex. This sounds like a joke but we all look each other in the eyes religiously, each and every time a toast is made.

I learned a couple other interesting things regarding toasting since then. Ya know why we clink each others glass when we make a toast ? The meaning goes back hundreds of years. Way back when? it became a common practice in medieval terrorism tactics to poison someone's drink to 'do them in'. This was typically someone in a higher social status, like the King or the Pope...someone who was difficult to physically approach/attack and in a position of power. But it became widespread in the Middle Ages and people started clinging their wooden or metal gobelet together before drinking, in hopes of spilling into each other's drink, as a kind of a 'fair play' gesture.