On work hours, the Scandinavians do still have the Protestant work ethic culturally, but have been trying to cut back on number of hours, out of a theory (probably correct imo) that in a modern information economy it's more about quality of work than quantity of hours in chair. The current Danish workweek is 37 hours, and followed quite religiously. Everyone is on time and works efficiently during the day (no 2-hour lunches), but few people can be found in the office past 3pm on a Friday.
Scandinavia is also an interesting option on the last point if you aren't up to the language-learning, though there are pros/cons. It's actually harder to integrate language-wise than most other places, because the languages are phonologically difficult for Americans (especially Danish), and people all speak good English so their patience for your broken language is low as they can just switch. So you'll probably learn more Spanish in Spain or Italian in Italy than Danish in Denmark. But because of the good English, it's quite possible to at least partly integrate culturally if you find the right social circles. (It also makes it easy to deal with formalities, since much government and bank correspondence can be done in English if you request it.)
It is true that quality is more important than quantity. But somehow in many cases people do use that as an excuse to slack off, and on the contrary, people delivering the best quality also those that do not skimp on quantity. If somebody knows how to do his thing in an excellent way, he'd probably also stay after 3pm on Friday to finish his thing. If his mind turns off at 3pm, then maybe he wasn't turned on too much even at 2pm. At least where it concerns professions which require personal engagement, if you just dig holes 9 to 5 (to 3 on Friday) then it's different of course.
I guess I don't think that's true. Imo, the best quality comes from companies with happy employees who have good work/life balances, not from the kind of places that expect employees to be chained to the boss.
Scandinavia is also an interesting option on the last point if you aren't up to the language-learning, though there are pros/cons. It's actually harder to integrate language-wise than most other places, because the languages are phonologically difficult for Americans (especially Danish), and people all speak good English so their patience for your broken language is low as they can just switch. So you'll probably learn more Spanish in Spain or Italian in Italy than Danish in Denmark. But because of the good English, it's quite possible to at least partly integrate culturally if you find the right social circles. (It also makes it easy to deal with formalities, since much government and bank correspondence can be done in English if you request it.)