In the governor's office in Klagenfurt, capital of Dr Jorg Haider's southern Austrian fiefdom of Carinthia, informality is the order of the day. The young male receptionist, who wears black jeans and sports a prominent earring, refers to his boss as Jorg, and so does everyone else.
There could be no greater contrast to Vienna, where government officials are so elegantly dressed that they look as if they are about to spend an evening at the opera.
But when he appears, Dr Haider seems a little ill at ease, as if the responsibilities of government have robbed him of his old, mischievous sparkle.
After seven months of sanctions imposed by its EU partners, Austria is back in the diplomatic fold again, and the Chancellor, Dr Wolfgang Schussel, will this week make an official visit to Dublin, the first such trip to an EU capital since the sanctions were lifted.
Dr Haider, however, shows no sign of forgiving Austria's partners, and his advice to the Chancellor ahead of next month's EU summit is brutally simple.
"No compromises. Because the EU has not behaved towards Austria in such a way that we should be prepared to compromise," he said.
Although he acknowledges that Ireland was among Austria's more sympathetic partners during the sanctions regime, Dr Haider is curiously graceless about the two countries' shared interests.
"Austria can learn from Ireland because Ireland was very skilful at organising its interests and actually got money out of the EU. We've only put a lot of money into the EU until now. I'd wish for a fruitful partnership with Ireland where we'd learn how to get money out of the EU and not pay into it," he said.
If Dr Haider is feeling sulky, he has much to sulk about, not least the sharp fall in popularity his far-right Freedom Party has experienced since they entered government with Dr Schussel's conservative People's Party.
At last year's election the Freedom Party emerged as the second-largest party with 27 per cent of the popular vote. But that share has now fallen to 20 per cent, while the Chancellor's party has soared into first place.
"It would be a bad sign if they didn't profit from it because everyone knows that the Chancellor always has a chancellor's bonus if he makes no mistakes. There's nothing surprising about that," Dr Haider said.
To add to his gloom, Dr Haider faces an investigation into claims that his party used information obtained illegally from a police computer to damage its political opponents. The far-right politician denies the allegations, which he maintains were concocted by his enemies in an attempt to undermine his position and split the governing coalition.
But prosecutors have questioned dozens of witnesses, including Dr Haider himself, and the Austrian press is clearly convinced that there is substance to the story. Among those at the centre of the scandal are some of Dr Haider's closest allies, friends he will need if, as many Austrian observers predict, he soon faces a battle for control of the Freedom Party.
Earlier this year Dr Haider stepped down as party leader, passing the baton to a long-standing political friend, Ms Susanne Riess-Passer. Ms Riess-Passer, who is Austria's Vice-Chancellor, was in Carinthia earlier this month to reassure the party faithful that her loyalty to her former mentor remains undimmed.
"I'm an old political war-horse. I am bound to Jorg by the fact that we fight towards the same ends, and a friendship that has survived the most difficult times," she said.
Sweet words, but some of Dr Schussel's allies whisper that Ms Riess-Passer has started to settle comfortably into office and that she is determined to serve a full term.
Dr Haider, on the other hand, has shown increasing signs of irritation with the constraints of power and has taken to accusing Dr Schussel of hogging the limelight and dumping the blame for unpopular decisions on the Freedom Party.
Vienna holds municipal elections early next year, and most political observers predict that, if the Freedom Party fares badly, Dr Haider will seek an opportunity to take his party out of government.
In the meantime, the Carinthian governor is ensuring that Dr Schussel's room for manoeuvre at next month's EU summit will be severely limited. On the three big questions on the agenda - the extension of qualified majority voting, the reform of the Commission and the reweighting of votes to increase the influence of bigger member-states - Dr Haider is determined that the status quo should prevail.
"We certainly can't agree to any departure from the principle of unanimity. For a small country like Austria, it's essential. With the EU sanctions, we saw that it is essential for a small country like Austria that we should sit as equals at the table with the big countries and the important questions should be decided unanimously," he said.
Dr Haider owes much of his international notoriety to remarks he has made praising Hitler's employment policies and honouring SS veterans which have given the impression that he takes an equivocal view of the Third Reich. But it is Dr Schussel who has provoked the latest row over Austria's past by telling the Jerusalem Post that Austria must be regarded as Hitler's first victim.
Opposition politicians were outraged, accusing the Chancellor of undoing much of the work of the past decade in coming to terms with the enthusiastic support shown by many Austrians for the Nazis. Dr Haider, who has stayed out of the row, is clearly enjoying the Chancellor's discomfiture.
"I'm somewhat amused by this discussion because about 13 or 14 years ago I conducted this discussion and I received accusations for my comments that Schussel is getting now. It has taken him 13 years to say what I said then," he said.
Dr Haider has not changed his mind about Austria's role, although he acknowledges that many Austrians took part in atrocities on behalf of Hitler.
"Austria was the first victim: there's no question about it. We were the first state that was conquered militarily. That doesn't mean that Austrians were not perpetrators.
"Austrians were in this sense victims and perpetrators during the Third Reich. Some were victims who were sent to concentration camps and there were some who were perpetrators, supervising prisoners in concentration camps or were part of the system," he said.
He points out, correctly, that the Allies recognised Austria's victim status after the second World War and, despite his government's promise to heighten awareness about the darker side of Austria's record, he thinks it is time to draw a line under the entire period.
"If you ask me honestly I've had enough of all this twaddle about the coming to terms with the past. In the years after the end of the second World War, Austria has made many compensation payments. There should finally be an end to this debate. Otherwise we must talk about what happened to the Sudeten Germans.
"What happened to the ethnic Austrians, millions of whom were driven from their homes? I miss this question.
"Either we talk about everything or we talk about nothing any more," he said.