In public, everyone's door is open just a crack. We can afford to open our metaphorical doors, to call everybody by first names, because we can always retreat into our personal space when our fellow humans become annoying. Austrians and Germans don't let them get annoying in the first place. Again and again I expect apologies from people brushing past me, cutting me off, taking cuts in line, or accepting service ahead of me even though I've been holding up my end of the deal by waiting patiently. But there's nothing to apologize for.
Any open space is free game.
That this is so, and accepted as such by the natives, is attested by the experiences of Austrians in the Anglo-American world. You first notice it with regard to trivialities, but they add up to a completely different atmosphere. Thus I was surprised by how wide the aisles are in the supermarkets, and I was amused to see people start to apologize when they came within six feet of you. One of lasting impressions an Austrian acquaintance took home from a trip to London was the fact that someone actually apologized after running into her on a bicycle. One snowy day in Salzburg I was walking down a sidewalk with only one path shoveled free.