Some Germans arebut what I learned from living here is that a lot of Germans lack confidence to actually speak English. In many ways that's a good thing because then you're forced to learn German to live here. Up here there's less of a habit for people to swap into English when your accent gives you away, but it's not actually that bad. The younger someone is, the more likely they are to have better English than the average American. That makes me feel stupid when they've stood patiently listening to me stagger through childish, broken German for two or three minutes, of course, but there we go.
(
boris the spider,
Sun 29 Jul 2012, 22:28,
archived)