In summer time all you see are German, Austrian and Swiss license plates, the DACH area has always been a No. 1 destination for expats / refugees from the region and German language proficiency is quite high.
Yeah, but how much that has to do with the German language influence itself, and how much to do with mass emigration there due with the proximity of former-Yugoslav countries to DACH countries following the wars? For most people, being 4h drive away from home, is better than flying to Netherlands/UK, nothing to do with their preference for German language.
Plus, former Yugoslavia isn't really all for Eastern Europe. Poland, Romania, Bulgaria, Ukraine, the Baltics have little affinity to the German language and they're huge population centers.
> Many Austrian companies (UNIQA, RBI, Strabag, Buwog, etc.) dominate the playing field
Because these large and ultra corrupt Austrian companies know how to play the corruption game in the Balkans. Funny how Austrian companies are so big there but not in other countries. Why is that I wonder.
Maybe, but that was not my experience growing up in Romania, unless maybe you refer to some niches of highly educated and cultured people in some posh circles of academia, but I'm talking more about the average joe. English was by far the most dominant foreign language learned by the youth due to the influence of Anglo entertainment industry, followed by French as a distant second, and then German.
The fact that more people emigrated to Germany than to France or the UK (maybe, I don't have statistics) has nothing to do with people's affinity for that country's language or culture, but to the economic opportunities available to them there. Most people didn't study German before emigrating to Germany, but learned it there out of necessity. This might just be my circles, but nobody I knew growing up had any affinity or interest for the German language or German culture as it was seen as an ugly and difficult to learn language of boring hard-working people who are only famous for building great cars and for that other thing (no offence, but that was the stereotype amongst clueless young people), people only wanted to learn German to emigrate there later in life for economic reasons.
>German has been popular in Bulgaria, too
Do you have a source on that? Like I said before, a country being a popular destination for labor immigration doesn't mean that foreign language is also popular in that country.
