> The Germans never spoke German, even afaict in one-to-one conversations This is fairly standard etiquette everywhere I've been in Central and Northern Europe

> The Germans never spoke German, even afaict in one-to-one conversations This is fairly standard etiquette everywhere I've been in Central and Northern Europe. The general idea is that it would be rude to have a one on one _next_ to you in a language that you might not understand. Also in general I think people that only speak one language always assume other people are bad mouthing when usually people are just talking about random trivialities or some work/life problems. So it's always safer to keep everything in English.