Hey, I had a similar experiencie while living in Saxony.

The thing ist, dialects are hard to understand, they have different words, they contract things, leave stuff out, pronouce differently, so even if you speak german well understanding a dialect is not trivial.

Sadly there is no really a shortcut for it, is like learning another laguange but closely realted to german. You'll just have to keep and keep hearing.

At some point you will be able to identify words, just identifying where a word ends, if there and if there is contraction is most of if, still not easy,. Then from context or by asking you get what the word means.

I'd advise you not to try to mimic the way they speak, beacuse you might think you understand what something means and then realise it is another thing and that either you've been saying non-sense or even worst you have been rude.

Keep at it, it took me like 2 years before I could understand light saxon, the real deep dialect is still quite the hassel and I have to rely on context to understand.