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I have a fairly good accent, but I also have a good ear for copying other people and impressions. My accent certainly isn't a typical British/American accent speaking German. The common mistakes are in pronouncing letters in an English way, rather than a German way.

That being said, intonation is relatively easy in German once you understand that all letters in German are always spoken in the same way, and always pronounced (no hidden letters), so once you have the grasp of the alphabet you can pretty much pronounce anything. In other words "Hochdeutsch" (high German) is fairly easy to get to grips with.

The hardest thing is German is the grammar. You simply have to learn the articles and tenses. Even Germans sometimes make mistakes with the articles (der, die, das, etc), which can change based on the tense, verb and base article.

For many English first language speakers, the lack of English grammar knowledge is a stumbling block to learning another language (it was in my case anyway).

One point to mention is that Germans seem to be particularly accommodating to my German language failures, impressed simply that I can converse in German. I am however white Caucasian and British. I'm not sure that same would apply if I was from Tunisia and black. In other words, I'm not sure if I have an observational bias. Other nationalities and cultures may have a vastly different experience to me.