I personally feel like I understand German-speaking people better the more I study the language.
E.g. my experience was that they are generally good listeners because their language has a sentence structure which forces the listener to wait for the most important information at the end of a sentence.
Bad Denglish to demonstrate:
“I have yesterday night… at the football field… together with friends … (dude get to the point) had a beer”
Must be even better with so many countries and cultures where that same language can connect you to their individual local culture!
Felt like a door opening into a new world when I travelled through German-speaking countries a second time after learning enough to get by.
Although it could also be that inbetween the travels I grew as a person and was more interested in the culture than before.
That was pretty much my experience. I went to Argentina with very little Spanish, and then got the chance to go back again a few years later with much better Spanish, and yeah, it felt like a door had opened to experiences that just weren’t available to me before. Even something as simple as heading to the store to get some milk and bread was radically different.
I can 100% relate.