[AmishDude]

To be fair, you don't know if you're talking to immigrants or tourists. Try visiting a land where you don't know the language. It's pretty frustrating.

[Doctor Stochastic]

I guess this means that Austria no longer plans to re-constitute the Austro-Hungarian Empire.

[muggs]

Try visiting a land where you don't know the language. It's pretty frustrating.

Yes it is, I was in San Diego, CA and couldn't even place a special order at McDonalds because I didn't know the language.

[NativeNewYorker]

Try visiting a land where you don't know the language. It's pretty frustrating.

I am far from well-travelled, but my long-ago trips to Hong Kong, Japan, Italy and France were fairly frustration-free.

Gestures, maps and a phrase or two got me whatever I needed.

On a different note, I just realized the following, scanning this thread: German is a notoriously difficult language to fathom. The Must Learn German Program *could* be a backdoor intelligence test.

[Docbarleypop]

I lived in sicily for 2 years, no one there thought i was anything but a tourist, 9 out of 10 times you can tell the tourist from the local