Frankfurt PA Olivia Whelan, 26, is the team assistant to 15 German managers and analysts at the Frankfurt offices of Close Brothers, a UK-based merchant bank. Before studying for an English and German degree at Exeter University, she worked in investment banking in London.

“My hours are 10am until 7pm and, unlike in London, when I worked from 8am until 6.30pm without a break, I always take an hour off for lunch. The pay is slightly less here, but the money goes much farther.

I found business German quite intimidating at first, but nowadays I keep an internet translation service on my desktop for instant reference.

The directors address each other as Frau or Herr and, while my team are relatively informal, they don’t understand why anybody would want to crack jokes in meetings and consider it a waste of time when colleagues in London spend half an hour chatting.

All the brusqueness can be annoying in shops, but at work it means I know where I stand. When I am given a piece of work to do, I am left in no doubt as to whether it’s due in an hour or at the end of the day and unlike in the UK, when work mysteriously piles up on your desk while you are at the photocopier, in Germany, people take the time to hand it to you personally.

When I worked in London, one of my team asked me to replace the cartridge in their fountain pen, whereas here, even the most senior person will start binding their own document if you don’t get in there first.

Although work is more structured, at weekends the café and restaurants stay open all day and rather than spend hours driving to Homebase, people really do take the time to relax.”

Euro London Appointments, a specialist multilingual recruitment firm, offers the following advice:

First names are not considered polite on first meeting
Humour and office life don’t mix
A residence permit or Aufenthaltsgenehmigung is renewable every five years.

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