“In Switzerland, tense conversation. Each sentence must stick to the business, no extra comments, and no funny stories!”
"In Portugal, I had embarrassing situations by calling people using family names without position treatment of “ Sr. “ or “Sr Engenheiro” or “Sr Dotor” "
“In German speaking countries, you address someone formally by saying “Sie”, and by applying the last name. This causes sometimes confusions, especially in emails (Austrians then write “Dear Mr. Prof. Dr….”, although this sounds very strange for foreigners. Otherwise, Austrians might feel upset if they are only addressed by their first name without using academic titles); especially in communicating with old people you have to take care of this”.
“If you ask Austrians “how are you?”, they will truthfully answer your question (if someone has a headache, he also says this). In most other countries, people always answer this question with “fine”. This led to embarrassing moments for some of my friends."
“I attended several meetings in Austria that were finished sharply because we were running out of time (one hour had been scheduled for that meeting though the meeting was important). It seemed that the meeting could not take more time than expected though no one had any other meeting right after ours.”
“The use of academic titles generally very important in Austria (and to a certain extent in the Czech Republic), whereas not at all in the UK (one must have one, but one must not call the person Dr., etc.)”