-Hello, how are you?- Hi, how are you?

So goes the anthem of Yankee hospitality. Gratuitously rehearsed and invariably expected, this mindless banter is the marquee of daily platitudes, euphemisms and legally enforced sensitivity. For members of polite society, this routine monitors a minutia of interaction ranging from the content of a formal greeting to the duration of a gaze at an enigmatic stranger.

Performed in an effort to spare hurt feelings and protect the sanctity of personal space, the routine is most flawlessly executed when money is concerned - elevating the compassion of a store clerk for a customer well beyond that of a doctor for a patient with an HMO. And although a fawning waitress might sugar-coat her voice to the point of putting us into diabetic shock, we have come to depend on these plastic pleasantries, the rigidity of which have solidified the face of America into a stifling bureaucratic smile.

But is kindness in etiquette the only way to induce kindness at heart? Not exactly. Frolicking across Northern Europe on a two-week rendezvous, I discovered a ridiculously simple alternative to our ultra-formal social structure: having less of it!

Shockingly enough, by smoothing over the seemingly unbridgeable divides between strangers, customers and service providers or employers and employees, Scandinavians have chosen to choose politeness and hospitality, rather than require it.

In America, official pleasantries tend to depend exclusively on the pre-determined social order, but in Europe they are significantly more contingent on personal rapport. So while the waiters won't razzle-dazzle you with a tap dance - taking care not to step on you toes - they are far more likely to strike up a conversation should you peak their interest. While enforcing customary tipping might Americanize that particular social exchange, Europeans are simply more interested in the people they're interested in, and less interested in the people they're not.

Of course, with our insatiable appetite for gossip, America's fascination with people is grossly self-evident. But our prying - unscrupulously and unabashedly - is limited to thick-skinned celebrities. Reticent civilians shield their privacy with the rules and stigmas of deportment - enforced by a fear of rejection, restraint warrants and a god-given right to personal space. Trespassing our individual force field might deem one a Seinfeldian close-talker, a flirter or - in the spirit of coffee-induced New York paranoia - a lunatic.

Stepping into JFK Airport still weak in the knees from misty Coppenhagen, I diagnosed these quirks as a national epidemic: acute claustrophobia with narcissistic overtones. Oddly enough, with less breathing room - and doubtlessly less breath mints - Europeans show no symptoms of the disease. Strolling through the streets, the pageant of American pedestrians - staged and individually spotlighted - is rarely disturbed by unscripted interaction. Throwing caution to the wind, Europeans have adopted a different approach: if they are interested in you, they'll look. If they like what they see; they'll smile. And if they get a response, they'll approach - well into the circumscribed

two-foot radius of personal space.

Granted, infiltrating the homogeneity of Denmark, Finland and Norway as a tourist gave me only the microscopic perspective of a foreign element in a healthy, well-oiled, self-sustaining machine. In the presence of someone odd or interesting, Europeans feel more at ease to satisfy their curiosity by the simple art of conversation, while an American would resort to the less efficient means, such as gossip and glares.

Sitting in an Internet caf in St. Petersburg and musing over the malfunctioning connection, I wasn't short of helpful advice from my neighbors. When dispensing directions, the leisurely Nordes often threw in obscure trivia and sight-seeing suggestions. Even the full-day company of a Polish cabbie as a private tour guide seemed no more creepy, dangerous or inappropriate than having beer and kielbasa with a new friend.

In America, the recipient of a stray smile and inquisitive words mistakes the attention as flirtation - thinking it to be superfluous to the standard social exchange. But on the other side of the Atlantic - where the Baltic breeze lulls away the anxiety to please - politeness isn't a routine, but a sporadic phenomenon between sincere and consenting individuals.