[bryanrasmussen]

>everyone under the age of 50 speaks good English and switched to that as soon as my first badly-conjugated sentence left my mouth.

OK maybe things have changed in recent years. I was always annoyed when coming to visit family living in Berlin for a couple days or driving in to a conference, and inevitably there would come a time when I would have to ask someone for help and I would have to ask in English because I do not speak German (although due to youthful immersion I start to remember it again after a couple of weeks) and they would inevitably answer in German.

I could somewhat understand when we stopped in a park asking where the convention center was of just a couple people by the side of the road, but asking a ticket agent at a train station what route I should take to get to a particular station and getting replies in German seemed especially rude.

At any rate despite some good experiences with Germans regarding helpfulness I have had a few too many negative experiences.

[marcus_holmes]

Berliners are renowned even in Germany for being blunt to the point of rudeness.

What we in the Anglosphere would consider rude, they consider efficient. It can be very off-putting at first, but you do get used to it.

[bryanrasmussen]

in most other countries renowned for being efficient it would not be considered efficient to answer in a language the questioner evidently does not speak.

[atoav]

To play the devils advocate: It is efficient — for them.

It is a bit of a myth that everybody in Germany talks English. Sure in an academic or business environment, or in certain social circles that can be taken for granted, but there are people who can only talk German or whose English is so bad they will avoid talking it.