I don't think that it's true that the experience listed is a complete given: I lived in a town outside Stuttgart when I was young and my mother had an extremely hard time of it along the lines of the article, where despite spending a lot of time trying to learn German the local government officials would refuse to even slow down their speech or use simpler language constructs to effectively communicate with a new learner of German. They were basically hostile and uncooperative because she was an immigrant even though she was visibly trying.

Compared to when I lived in Zurich essentially all government officials were willing to even just entirely speak English after briefly suggesting we speak German and only rolling their eyes slightly that I wasn't competently able to. Navigating the system there as a "first year resident" was zero problem by comparison.