Polonia /
Poland, Germany, France, Spain or Greece? [35]
Living and working in a country means unconditionally, irrefutably, knowing the language of that country in order to communicate with her inhabitants!
English won't help too much in Poland, Spanish not at all. When I lived and worked in Spain for several months, without Spanish, I couldn't have survived, even for a day!
English proved of even more limited usefulness than in Poland. Germany? Without a serious working knowledge of the local language, one can be literally bamboozled to death, especially in the big towns, where you start to speak in your basic English, at their suave insistence of course, only to learn that they perhaps miscommunicated your message into German, presuming you didn't understand, thus can merrily put one over on you so that YOU seem the fool and not they: In the best case scenario,
they actually DIDN'T understand your English, but typically were just too damned arrogant to admit it:-)