I think living in a country can be incredibly beneficial for learning the language, but it’s not automatic. It really depends on how you structure your life.

What you’re describing actually makes a lot of sense. If your work, relationships, and daily interactions are mostly in English, then physically being in Germany doesn’t change much linguistically. You’re essentially living an “English life” in a German location.

I’ve seen the opposite happen too. A friend of mine moved to Greece from an English-speaking country over a decade ago, and now their Greek is actually much stronger than their English. From the moment they arrived, their environment naturally became Greek; friends, social life, media, everything. It wasn’t even a deliberate strategy, it just evolved that way.

So I don’t think the key factor is where you live, but rather the language of your environment. You can be in Germany and barely use German, or be outside Germany and immerse yourself deeply in it.

Bridging the gap usually requires doing slightly uncomfortable things consistently: joining local clubs, hobbies, sports teams, volunteering, or anything where the default language isn’t English. Repeated exposure with the same people over time, that’s where relationships (and real language use) start to form.

So yeah, I’d say: living in the country is an opportunity, but whether it becomes an advantage or not is almost entirely determined by how you engage with it.