Not to get all sociological, but I was a little concerned about traveling to a Germanic country. The old stereotype about being curt and unfriendly and all that. Did not find that to be the case, everyone was friendly and pleasant and helpful. Although not as "chatty" as American service folk, they are more businesslike. The women selling me Westbahn train tickets didn't care to run through the various pricing and seating options, they just sold me 2nd class tickets and when I started to ask about 1st, they said wait until you're on the train and check it out and if you like it better, you can pay the conductor. So job done.
Similarly, the pharmacists we dealt with promptly filled the prescriptions and handed them over and ... that's about it. Thanks to Google Translate we were able to decipher the packaging and figure out how to take the stuff. I'm used to getting lectures from American pharmacists about how to take, when to take, interactions, etc. etc. Just a difference in styles.
I was also concerned about speaking German, my language background is French and Spanish. Almost all important signage was in German and English and almost everyone spoke English very well, so no worries. And after you're around it for a while, you start to see that many of their words are not so different from ours (easy to figure out what vasser is).