I agree this seems to be the way forward. I'm brushing up on my rusty and useless high-school German as a result of my company's work with a German client latel

I agree this seems to be the way forward. I'm brushing up on my rusty and useless high-school German as a result of my company's work with a German client lately – it makes everything a bit easier for extended trips. The advice I got from them was basically the same – if your goal is to be able to engage in basic conversational interactions, it's far more important to build up a useful vocabulary that it is to get the correct tenses or genders.