(on reading vs speaking: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23582262 )

Not to discourage you from a Sprachaufenthalt (ganz im gegenteil), but you can prepare for one by following germanophone papers. (which have the advantage that you've probably read many stories in your native tongue beforehand ... also one can start small by just picking out nouns at first, which won't the case for latin-1, but is very useful when learning a new script)

https://www.faz.net/aktuell/

https://www.nzz.ch (in Schrifttüütsch, conveniently for you)

I don't normally follow AT, maybe https://kurier.at ?

Hals und Beinbruch!

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Edit: there are a couple of amusing anecdotes on german culture in http://www.gutenberg.org/files/48612/48612-h/48612-h.htm which I find stereotypical to this day:

> Germans liked things done in an official and formal manner, even in the midst of chaos, catastrophe and defeat. The Allies obliged, and gave the Germans various forms of very official-looking "surrender passes," ... http://www.gutenberg.org/files/48612/48612-h/images/p4.jpg

> The Americans and British dropped leaflets on Berlin ... [with] key numbers in the corners, showing to which series they belonged ... Nazi authorities [sent] Hitlerjugend and Hitlermädel out to pick up the leaflets and turn them in for destruction. ... What the Nazis discovered—too late, too late—was that the schoolchildren had begun collecting the leaflets, using the key numbers to make up perfect sets. Some numbers were rarer than others, so that the Hitlerite children swapped Allied leaflets all over Berlin, trying to make up attractive albums. Mother and Father—who did not dare pick the leaflets up off the street for fear the Gestapo might be watching—found a convenient file, reasonably complete, in the room of little Fritzl or Ermintrude!

Undoubtedly not just a loose file, but neatly punched in a two-ring binder. When Oceania starts to always have been at war with Eurasia (that is, if they read their own books, which Dr. Linebarger doubts), they'll have to make up propaganda sets in the form of Panini cards.