The best way to pass as a Frenchman (if that's what you want) is to stick to group of other French people and not say much. However, you still have to get past the greeting ceremony - and that's more difficult than I ever thought it was.
I never thought much about greeting rituals, but they are more complex than I ever imagined and deeply integrated into local culture.
In Germany, we hardly ever say anything at all. A little wave or a nod to everyone in general is usually enough, perhaps accompanied with a little grunt or something along the lines of "'ello" (like "tach" or "yo"). Perhaps this is because of our efficiency-driven way of living; having to greet each other for ages would soak up valuable time we could put to work.
As if to confirm this, I read a description about some small island where the people seem to be particularly nice: "In a place where people having nothing else to do, they greet each other all the time.". It was a French journalist who wrote this, so I find it difficult to imagine - from my point of view, French people spend loads of time greeting.
The greeting ritual is still a mystery for me. A rough description: If you meet one or more people where it's not too crowded or awkward, you give all the blokes a handshake, all the girls the right number of 'bises' together with an appropriate micro-conversation about how you're doing. Sounds easy, but the details are difficult. If you're just greeting someone at the bakers for example, all this doesn't apply but a different set of rules becomes valid, that's when you start with the Bonjour-thing, but I won't go there for now.
First of all, you have to judge if the whole greeting ceremony can be shortened down to just giving the nearest people or even no-one at all the full greeting monty without being considered impolite. Of course if you're seeing someone the other end of a crowded bus, you don't have to walk over but if you're meeting someone in the corridor you're the right level of close to you can't skip it. If you don't know the person that well a verbal greeting might suffice, but not if it would leave an awkward gap (e.g. if you're waiting for the elevator together). The threshold for bises seems to be higher than for handshakes, but you usually wouldn't shake hands with a girl (I think).
Of course this is all different for formal occasions, luckily - I just couldn't imagine doing the bises before opening a bank account. In high-ranking positions it's something else: you will often see politicians doing bises if they want to make the closeness in a relationship clear. Bises between men are not at all uncommon, but luckily not compulsory. Now I think about it, I've seen that in Germany, too, but mostly with Turkish adolescents for some reason.
The next bit is what to say. I usually try and get out of this by being the first to say 'Salut, ça va?'. That way the other person has to think of an answer giving me some time to improvise the next bit of the conversation.
Like in some other countries (I've seen this with US-Americans, but I couldn't say this is generally true) the question 'ça va?' (meaning 'how are you?') is mostly not really an in-depth inquiry about your physical and mental health, but more like the near-dead 'how do you do?'. Again, this is very dependant on the type of relationship. The closer you are, the more details you may reveal. The most common is one of these: "Ça va? - Ça va.", "Ça va bien? - Oui, ça va" or variations. If you're a bit closer, it could be something like "Ça va? - Ouais... il faut... " (You alright? - Yeah... well... not much choice really....). However, you can't reveal serious problems, of course. If you're good friends OR you're extra-polite, you could say 'Comment vas-tu?' which this time really means "How are you?" (Ça va? literally means 'It goes?'). If the question was asked less out of politeness and more out of general interest, you may go ahead and answer honestly.
I don't know if it's a local thing, but Marseillaise people have a special answer for when they're alright: 'Ouais, tranquil...' ('yeah, easy-going...'). This would be a typical Marseillaise thing to say, explaining that the best possible state is when nothing really is happening.
The number of bises, by the way, seems to be regionally constant and is usually 1 on each side (at least here it is).
So, who would have imagined that I could write so much about greetings? I wonder if the German greeting has so many sides to it. I'd appreciate some input from some non-Germans, here.
I know one thing, however: It's not compatible to France. My way of greeting friends I see in the street at a medium distance is usually by yelling something short and easily perceptible like "hey!". Not being a complete cultural equivalent of the famous elephant in the china store I don't usually do that to French people, but I still do when I see Germans. Trouble is, to French ears it sounds a bit like "hey you, stop that or you'll meet my friend Desert Eagle" - this whole article is actually inspired by the 3 French guys I gave a jump when I was just greeting a fellow ERASMUS student.
