all the wannabe chavs I see here (never seen a real one here but they do try, bless 'um) greet each other with some sort of slapping arm-wrestling like hand shake thing where they clasp each other's right hands, palm to palm but with fingers passing towards wrist and clasping behind the other's thumb.

Is this a traditional Swiss thing, a recent thing, or is the whole world except me doing it? Where does it come from?

You feeling left out?
Wouldn't say its a chav thing or Swiss for that matter at all.
Been around for some time and is very prominent in alot of city's especially in the UK amongst friends.
Plus helps avoid the pathetic hand shake whereby someone grasps your fingers instead of your hand.

http://www.google.ch/search?q=H%C3%A...w=1024&bih=556

In the reply post above, I posted the handshake normal and traditional here in Switzerland. That slapping thing you mention is just a fashion of some people who want to demonstrate how modern fashionable they are.

My Treuhand did that shitt to me once, and I thought he was trying to arm-wrestle me. Thought we were Swiss home-boys after that.

not sure how it's less pathetic than a limp handshake. The over keen squeezing handshake is lamer, I admit that.

The mega "SLAP" part I don't quiet get at all.
Even amongst my friends and the dozens of different people I play various sports with I can't recall anyone trying to create a shockwave....
Prehaps the greater the sonic boom created the more Alpha the individual appears...

Yes! it´s part of a Swiss mating ritual.

well if one of them tries to mate with me in this fashion I'll start off as if I'm joining in and then at the last nano-second thumb my nose at him. That'll teach him!!!

isn't that how the freemasons know each other ?

I thought they knew each other from dimmly lit all-male half naked initiations ceremonies?

+ funny handshakes, and plenty of them around CH!

I'm not sure I understand... do you mean a bro-shake?

http://i.imgur.com/hbZsJ.jpg

I thought that was just a normal handshake for an informal greeting of people you share a comparable lifestyle to, i.e. your mates and their mates

Ah, das traditional bruder shake, ganau! I had no idea that originated in the ghettos of Zurich. Thanks

I think you're jealous.
You and your friends should make up secret handshakes! That's the style man!

But I don't have any friends

Wha'Wha'WHAT! Are you saying that the Swiss stole this from the Austrians!!!!!???? First skiing and now this.......

Skiing ??? Skiing as the modern sport was brought by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle and his colleages first to Switzerland and I don't know whether Austria-Hungary got it after this from the Brits or the Swiss

But sure, Arnold Schwarzenegger, in spite of living in the USA, in Austria, Bavaria and Switzerland always WAS a kind of "trendmaker" and so, it is well possible that his gesture DID have an influence