Just spent a weekend there: I heard more English spoken in public than German, and even found myself having to backtrack and switch to English (my first language) after instinctively starting conversations in German (my second language). It didn't quite feel like I was still in Germany; only the street signs and some business names brought me back.
A few of the people I met at the tech events I visited have lived in Germany long enough to get citizenship, but haven't applied because they aren't sure they could pass the language exams, and would have to take a lot of effort to get enough practice speaking - they work in English all day, and speak English to all of their friends.
Berlin is a different world from even the larger cities in southern Germany, like Munich or Nuremberg - reachable by high speed train in 3-5 hours.
For Americans, think NYC (Berlin) vs. Dallas (Munich).
It is SO hard to not switch to English when you start talking with someone who doesn't speak fluent German. It's some stupid automatism we Germans have and it took me years to break this habit. Maybe you can do the same and stick to your bad German even if the Germans switch to English? Conversations in two languages sound funny :-)
We have plenty of literature and media in German, and few languages get treated with the same effort by Hollywood distributors like German does.
If you already are a EU citizen, you simply won't bother with German citizenship. It will become an interesting problem for democracy to solve with Luxemburg have some 47% foreigners, not sure how many are EU-citizens [1].
A few of the people I met at the tech events I visited have lived in Germany long enough to get citizenship, but haven't applied because they aren't sure they could pass the language exams, and would have to take a lot of effort to get enough practice speaking - they work in English all day, and speak English to all of their friends.
Berlin is a different world from even the larger cities in southern Germany, like Munich or Nuremberg - reachable by high speed train in 3-5 hours.
For Americans, think NYC (Berlin) vs. Dallas (Munich).