Lena you did the right thing in London, definitely. It's really important there, to be polite as a foreigner. English people love to complain about rude foreigners... On the other hand, if they notice that you have mastered English niceities, then they think you are a great person!

Thanks for the tip about the queue Marcus!

Seraph... re the Spanish: I never noticed that. I think they are polite. They are like Russians in that they will shout at people who are about to do something stupid, make a mistake or forget something. Swedish or English people would not do that.

Interesting to hear that Fabricio reacted the same way to this as I did.

Today when I was at a cafe, a guy was sitting next to me, with a dog. Several people came up to him and said "Здравствуй товарищ!" in a loud voice and laughing. I thought it was rather peculiar, but after a while I realised that Товарищ had to be the name of the dog!

I think my questions are answered though - I have a few alternatives which sound polite enough to me.

Basil77 - Oh, that's interesting! So it's a rather recent development in the language then...? It's true that in Russian films of old times, the people are very polite, a bit like the French would be.

In Sweden, we also had a bit of political influence on the language (ты - вы )funny that we made this change, and not the USSR!
Basically in the 1970s, there was an official move away from the formal word for "you". The idea was that everyone was completely equal, and the idea that somebody like a boss, deserved more respect than the employee was politically incorrect. The same thing later happened in schools and across society. Authorities started writing letters in such a way that they did not have to make a stand either way - avoid directly addressing the person. So the polite form was dropped by almost everyone apart from "reactionary" type people. My bourgeouis background (hehe!) meant that
and when I was younger, I spent a lot of time worrying about whether to be politically correct by mainstream definition with certain people, or polite according to the old fashioned tradition. Making a mistake was almost like a political provocation, or with posh people, a sign of being 'common' or vulgar, rather than inpolite. So it was a real minefield. And now because of this, lots of people are making mistakes with this when speaking foreign languages - particularly German where the words are really similar, and people just forget.

To all Russian people I'd definitely give the advice to use please and thank you A LOT when you speak English! Basically, you can not use it too much in the English language. Whenever you ask somebody for anything at all, remember to put please in there!

I should say that I have had very good service so far in these countries. I have nothing to complain about. Conductors on trolleybuses, shop staff and restaurant staff are polite enough for me. I think a British or American person might see them as rude simply because they don't smile a lot, because of the please/thank you thing and because a lot of service staff don't immediately attend to the customer. To me, that is relatively normal. When they do help, they are very friendly.