alt Hacker NewsDid you ask if you can move to a different city and work remotely? Even if only 1-2 years, it might really help to boost your German. Moving to Dresden, Hanover, or Hamburg would help. (German HNers can probably recommend a bunch of small cities 1-2 hours away by train/car from Berlin that will use much more German language!) You could come to the office once a week.
Another tip: Always start the conversation in German. If the person switches to English, ask them politely to speak German, and explain that you are studying German. My parents did similar when they moved to the Netherlands 50 years ago. The local shopkeepers were eager to practice English with my parents, but my parents were also eager to practice their Dutch.
That's really good advice, but I found it hard to put into practice because my German was so bad. And German isn't a language you can just hammer out a badly-formed sentence in; word position is less important than conjugation, so if you get the conjugation wrong it makes no sense at all to the listener. I did try this a few times, but everyone lost patience with the painful butchering of their language when they realised their English was a lot better than my German.
I would have moved city, but a: COVID b: my wife also had a job there c: I really loved Berlin and really enjoyed living there