Cross-cultural Europe

SEVEN MONTHS ON AND WE'RE SETTLING DOWN nicely in the Netherlands. The kids are happy in school, the wife has her own car and life is assuming a semblance of normality.

Normality, in this case, also means I can realistically set a target of spending only 25 to thirty weeks this year travelling, and most of that travel will be in short hops. Moscow is only three hours and forty minutes away from home now. That also means I get to spend more time in the countries I visit – and I’m starting to see that, deep down, they’re not all that different from home.

For example: I was sitting in a presentation in Warsaw recently, where a business was bragging about the growth in a particular line. In one of the slides the numbers had been reversed, so it looked like there had actually been a decrease. The presenters looked at each other, smiled, and one said: “We apologise but it seems as if there is a ‘Czech’ problem in the numbers.”

With the Polish accent, we thought the word was “check”, as in “Damn, we forgot to check the slides”. Only during drinks after the presentation did we learn it had been a jibe at people from the Czech Republic. I still don’t know why, exactly. The best explanation offered had something to do with the way you spell in Czech, but that smells like a diplomatic retreat.

Similarly, I was sitting in Kiev in Ukraine when some heavy furniture had to be rearranged to accommodate more people in the room. A female employee chirped to her colleague that this was a job requiring “a Polish solution”, which I later found out refers to the physical strength of Polish men. Which is apt, I guess, when you consider the official ranking of the strongest men in the world: the two top spots are held by Poles.

Then there is the cultural debate between the Ukrainians and the Russians. Don’t ever even think of bringing up the whole Ukraine-is-the-cradle-of-Russia thing; that’s my advice. Or even within countries; don’t try to dispute that people in Warsaw are business types, that Krakow is the home of party animals or that Poznan residents aren’t actually German.

My approach is to sit back and ask questions but never offer any thoughts on the matter. That way I can learn without putting my foot in my mouth, as I would surely do, and risk important business relationships.

All this shouldn’t come as a surprise, I guess. No matter where you go, human nature is still human nature.