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Alcohol
Culture is about those things which we take for granted; those ways of behaving which we adopt on autopilot. Those 'everybody knows...' type of areas. When I went on a teacher exchange to Belgium I arrived on a Friday afternoon and was greeted by a champagne cocktail at a staff meeting during which I was introduced. The school was a secondary school and back in Britain, as far as I was aware, there was just no alcohol on the premises so I found this incredibly surprising. It turned out that this was a special occasion and that they were celebrating the beginning or end of a European project (it was a long time ago so I forget which) but even so I couldn't imagine any circumstances in which this would happen in the educational institution where I worked.
I have since experienced other alcohol related incidents such as feeling profoundly uncomfortable that you can buy alcoholic drinks at filling stations here in Denmark even though when I think about it logically, it probably would have no significant effect on the amount of drunk driving which was the reasoning behind the British law prohibiting this. Also here in Denmark a beer or two at meetings is not uncommon although getting rarer.
These examples are very good instances of what I was used to being challenged. I guess alcohol is potentially a very tricky area in many cross-cultural situations.
Anne Fox
