Hallo /deutsch/. I have a few questions about Germany and just the culture in general if you guys don't mind. I went with my half-German fiancée a couple months back and also to see Europe for the first time, and we kind of had a culture shock.

I heard people say that Americans do a lot of fake customer service niceness. But just in the few days I was in Germany, I faced the complete opposite a few times. Like for example a German customer service employee in a big tourist area straight up asking me if I could even speak English right? He was obviously having some trouble with his English, no problem since it's not his native language I just had to keep asking him to repeat some stuff since I couldn't understand, but this seriously pissed him off somehow? Did I just get bad luck with the people I encountered? I try to always be respectful and not really do an extra small talk, and I always heard the stereotype about Germans being cold but in the sense of avoiding small talk too, but this just seems way different.

Were we being unintentionally rude to people by going up to them and asking for their help in English? I know in America you can generally go up to people for help, but is that frowned upon here? I learned a little German before I went but it wasn't even A1, and I always hear people say that Germans know a lot of English but that didn't seem to as common as we thought. Should we have started with something like "Sprechen Sie Englisch?" or just not really tried to talk to random strangers?

A small thing too is that a lot of roads here felt super small and thin? I rented a car to drive around in, but some streets were legit so small I thought I would scratch the parked ones, let alone trying to park myself. We think might try the Deutsch Bahn for our next trip to see her family in 2 months, but as we've never really used trains before you think we could do that? I've heard people say it has a lot problems so not sure.