this post was submitted on 21 Mar 2024
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Sounds like you visted a rural area maybe in the former GDR? Definitly not a normal expirence.
Yeah in my experience pretty much everyone under the age of around 40 in any major city speaks English there. Cities like Berlin sometimes it seems like half the people there don’t even speak German haha
When I lived there in the 80s to mid-90s most people I encountered didn't speak much English. I've heard it's different nowadays.
Yeah that makes sense, that’s right about when they started teaching English in schools from grade school on. That’s why everyone under 40 tends to speak great English but over 40 and it’s hit or miss.
Zeuthen was technically in the DDR but it's also a satellite city of Berlin, so I'd expect more English proficiency. Even if you go to the most provincial shit kicker town in Norway, Sweden, Denmark, the Netherlands, Finland every homeless alcoholic or heroin addict is at least bilingual but my experience in Germany was that outside tourist traps you'd be lucky to get a couple of sentences out of anyone.