[mschild]

Berlin is not Germany.

Yes, every city and region is a bit different but Berlin as a whole has such a different culture, especially if you predominantly speak English.

Most of my colleagues are English speaking only and they sometimes complain that its hard to do certain things where I have no problem with it. Getting appointments, doctors and Bürgerbüro especially, they always seem to struggle with. You can certainly get by without or very little German in Berlin, but there are things that are significantly harder to do. I'd argue you're generally missing out on a lot of smaller aspects of the culture if you experience the English version of it.

Though I get its hard to learn German. Not an easy language and all the English in Berlin doesn't make it easier.

[smcl]

Yeah it's definitely hard to learn another language when there are a lot of people who speak your language and you don't necessarily need to learn it to get by. I have a tip if you want German to feel a bit easier though, hop over to Czech Republic for a bit and take a couple of Czech classes. German will suddenly seem an order of magnitude simpler by comparison :)

Note: I'm not trying to trivialise your efforts to learn German, rather to encourage you by saying it could be much worse. For me I glance every now and then at Hungarian and Finnish and think "ok I can handle Czech"