I once had a bit of Schadenfrunde while travelling in Netherlands, having the conductor telling us to switch trains in Dutch, and all my German fellow travellers wondering what it was all about.
The Dutch seem to understand German better, but my Dutch friends credit that more to education and exposure.
I speak both some German and some Dutch (as nth languages, I can understand them fine but speaking is hit and miss) and sometimes I don't notice which is which and answer in the wrong language, to me they're almost the same language with a different accent. I translate the German into some Frenglish mess for my Flemish friends to help them understand and it works great.
You have to "adjust your ears" a bit but I think if you know German and English then you can understand Dutch just fine if it's not slang.
A similar thing has caused the tension between the germanic and Romance languages that followed the Roman border line N to S that separates Europe.
i grew up in austria and in the north of germany so i got an early appreciation for understanding dialects. yet learning dutch took me a few months of staying in the netherlands. on the other hand when i visited luxemburg people were shocked that i could understand them when they spoke amongst each other
If the EU were a serious and legitimate institution, there would be an effort to implement reforms that nudge English, Dutch, and present day German all towards better mutual intelligibility, NOT diversion from each other through perversion and "simplification", or what seems to be a pollution and destruction of the current German and Dutch language through what at least Germans have a term for, "Verdenglichung", i.e., the portmanteau of German (De..) and English, prefixed with "ver...", meaning the transformation or application of.
The EU makes travel between EU countries as easy as travel between US states. You can just get on a train from Germany to Spain without any prior planning.
Do you complain when announcements in your home country are given in exclusively non-German languages?
Making announcements in German in the US makes little sense.
The point was that even in international trains inside Germany, announcements related to trains problems are only done in German.
I speak it fluently, including some variations, however most travellers do not.
I also remember there used to be ticket machines in NRW only in German, about 20 years ago.
