I've been living in Berlin as an expat for almost 2 years now and absolutely everybody speaks English. I'm actually having trouble learning German because of ho

I've been living in Berlin as an expat for almost 2 years now and absolutely everybody speaks English. I'm actually having trouble learning German because of how ubiquitous it is. The ticket machines are really simple, select region, select type of ticket and input money, how badly can they translate it? As for the bus/subway, they stops are announced in German, but how hard is it to figure out "Nächste Station," and even in more complicated cases you can pick up the few words you need to understand. Even the hobos speak English. Startup meetups, events, investor talks all happen in English, I work in a company where the official language is English, as is in most larger IT companies. For basic communication you should also put in a little effort to learn a few German phrases (which is the polite thing to do) for necessities, and you'll have no problems.