I guess I have always assumed that almost all Germans can speak English, at least some English... but I learned today that it wasn't the case.

While having breakfast in my hotel this morning, a couple sitting next to me were talking to each other in German. The lady was calling someone and got nowhere with her very broken English. Her husband took the phone from her and spoke in equally broken English. They hung up and started to look up something on their phone again. They called and the same thing happened again, so they hung up.

Not sure where I got the courage to use my almost forgotten German to ask them what the problem was. My German was even more broken than their broken English. After a couple of minutes, with the help of Google Translate, I figured out that they were trying to call Lufthansa. The number was 800 645 3880. They apparently were unable to get to a German-speaking agent. I told them that they should have just called Lufthansa's number in Germany. They did and was connected to someone who spoke German.(well, it's Lufthansa's number in Germany!)

It got me wondering.... why was their English so bad? they looked very educated and very upper middle-class. I later found out that the husband was a bank teller or something like that and they were on vacation here.

does LH have a number in the US for German-speaking customer who can't speak English? out of curiosity, I dialed their regular 800 number and the menu didn't have an option for someone to press a number to reach a German-speaking agent?