Don't greet, no!
“I'm going to Catalunya Ràdio, to Diagonal-Beethoven,” I tell him absentmindedly to the taxi driver. Any taxi driver who has passed the taxi driver exam knows where this station is, or, if they don't, they know how to identify the streets I've mentioned. The man looks at me and makes no gesture. “There, at Via Veneto,” I tell him, then. Because Via Veneto is also the restaurant all taxi drivers know. He opens his eyes wider. He says nothing. I understand that he doesn't know what I'm talking about, but since he doesn't speak, I don't know if he's unaware of the address or the language I'm speaking to him in. “At Francesc Macià,” I say, then. He opens them even wider.
It doesn't surprise me that he doesn't know anything about the city, not just any street but any code. A radio station, a square, the concepts "sea" and "mountain"... I remember that, a few years ago, they gave you the street and they made you look for it. Now, what they do, with a lot of luck, is ask you to "tell" it to them yourself on your mobile phone, which doesn't understand you either, depending on how. What surprises me is that in the face of incomprehension, you no longer need to say anything. In a bar, the waiter who doesn't understand you stays silent, looking at you as if he were afraid. In a taxi, the driver who doesn't understand you stops, seized by panic or nothingness. They don't say: "Excuse me, I don't understand you." They don't say "Sorry, I don’t understand”. They don’t say: “What did you say?" They say nothing.
It's a matter primarily for young people, okay, but not exclusively. Those who don't understand you are so used to isolation (thanks to phones, to screens) that they've lost all social awareness. They're like children who touch themselves in public; they don't see the need to communicate to another human what's going on in their heads or, more importantly, what isn't. Before, we complained that when entering a shop, young customers wouldn't say hello. Now, there are no young customers. Those who don't say hello are the young people serving. It's not necessary.