>I was in Rome recently and thought it was amusing that Italians answer their phones with "Pronto" which means "Ready". Seems a bit direct to me !

In Hungary, there was a recent habit (recent as of 10 years ago when I worked there) of answering with "{last name here} vagyok" (... I am). We had a guy whose last name was Nagy (Big), and he had a lot of fun answering calls with "I am big"... because he was pretty much the shortest guy in the office.

Back home, the usual norm is to call or answer with "halo, here (name)", but some guys would invariably say "halo, (name) on the telephone", which would prompt the friend on the other end of the line to say "well climb down off the phone, you'll break it".