There are different benchmarks for gauging your fluency in a foreign language. Some say that you are truly fluent once you've had a coherent dream in that language. I say you're fluent when you can come up with a witty comeback when a native foreigner makes some jackass remark to you.
Most people I've randomly run in to (not literally) on the street or in stores or in public tend to be jackasses. And by people I mean Germans. From the contruction worker who told me the sun wasn't shining when I was riding my bike with my sunglasses on on a cloudy morning... I'm sorry; I don't like wind in my eyes, and I'm not about to go out and spend 15€ on a pair of lightly tinted sunglasses... asshole. ...to that lady in the bakery who cuts in front of me in line, and then claims she was in front of me the whole time... I didn't call her out, because I'm not a jerk... or better said I'm not a Gerkman, but she called me out on my, in her eyes, cutting in front of her, when I tried to order at the same timer as her.
Okay, so your country has a population density 8 times that of the U.S. and most of you still have a complex about your predecessors trying to exterminate an entire race of people... that doesn't mean you have to be an asshole to everyone you run into on the street. And they're not jerks like New Yorkers either, because with New Yorkers you can't really take them seriously... it's all tongue-in-cheek. But Germans take themselves so seriously that I have to be offended when they're jerky to me.
You can say all you want about them being coconuts and us being peaches... but I still think they're jerks. Even if I'm supposedly being shallow when I smile at someone on the street, at least I made that person's day a little brighter, or at least left it unchanged, as opposed to ripping out that person's heart and peeing on it. I guess that's a bit of an exaggeration, but you get my point.
But as a counterpoint, I must say that every German I've had personal interaction with, whether he/she be a family member, family friend, coworker or friend, was extremely nice, kinder, in fact, than most Americans I know personally. So I guess the coconut/peach analogy may be more apt than I give it credit.
The problem with brief public interaction and the jackassery which stems therefrom is really rooted in reactive personalities, which aren't exclusive to Germans. I mean I wouldn't be so pissed off by them if I didn't have a reactive personality. Bringing it all full-circle... I'm not at a point of fluency where I can easily verbally react to Gerkmans, so I just end up brooding about it for a few hours and writing a blog post.
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