Beer Baron wrote: Except when you deal with a government office. Then well educated, upper-middle class people will pretend not to understand a word of English. But that is because German bureaucracy is a work of malicious sadism.
Well, that's only fair, really. Bureaucratic anything is Official Business and it must be approached with the proper decorum.
One of my friends spent a summer there and was somewhat frustrated by everyone switching to English when speaking with him. I couldn't decide if they were getting a chance to use their Englisch or if they were just trying to be polite when they heard his accent.
