Easy German Phrases for tourists | Get ready for your next trip!

Are you traveling to Germany, Switzerland, or Austria? Maybe you're coming here for a holiday, to visit family, or maybe even check out if this could be a place you would like to live. If you're worrying about getting around in German, then this video is for you. In today's lesson, I'm going to equip you with all of the basic survival phrases you need in order to have an easy time getting around. If you're excited to dive in, then please leave a like. And if we haven't met yet, my name is Salome. I'm a native German teacher, and I help people who are relocating to the German-speaking countries become confident and conversational. On this channel, I teach practical German that you need on a day-to-day basis. So if that sounds like something you want more of, then subscribe now. Okay, bist du bereit? Los geht's! So the first things you're going to need are the greetings in German. I've made a whole video on various phrases, formal and informal, that you can use, but these are a bit more advanced. So for the start, you can use a simple Hallo. It almost sounds like the English hello. Easy, right? Now for daily life, if you go out to your local bakery, to a store or restaurant, it is quite common to use formal greetings based on the time of the day. So let's dive into it. For the morning, you can use the phrase Guten Morgen. And for the majority of the day, we just say good day, which in German is Guten Tag. Starting from 5 p.m., you switch your Guten Tag to a Guten Abend, which means good evening. Besides knowing the greetings, yes, no, thank you, and please are one of the most basic things you should know when visiting the German-speaking countries. So for yes, you can simply say Ja. And for no, Nein. There are different ways to say thank you in German, and the easiest one is Danke. Or if you want to sound even more polite, you can say Vielen Dank. Or Dankeschön. Dankeschön is pronounced with the German Ö sound, so it's not a Dankeschon, which I hear very often, as a lot of people pronounce it that way. It's Dankeschön. I cover these so-called Umlaute, those are the vowels with the two dots on top of them, Ö, Ü, and Ä, in my free training for beginners. The link to register for free is in the description box below. So do make sure you check it out, because it's really important to understand the Umlaute, as they can sometimes change the entire meaning of a word. Now Germans do have the stereotype to be a little bit cold and very straightforward. While that is definitely true in certain situations, Germans are also really polite, especially when speaking to strangers in a restaurant or at a store. So a very common expression we say all the time is Entschuldigung, which means excuse me or sorry. I use this almost daily, for example when I want to order something, or I interrupt someone else's day to ask a question. It is a bit tricky to pronounce, so a helpful tip is to break it down into its syllables. Let's do this together. So let's take a look at some more important phrases you'll need when traveling to the German-speaking countries. Entschuldigung, wo ist die Toilette bitte? In order to navigate the situation successfully, you'll also need to know the words for ladies and gents, which is Damen and Kerren. If I'm at the mall, I would sometimes also ask more specifically for die Damentoilette, because sometimes they're in different corners of the store. Now moving to the restaurant, if you want the menu, you'll need to ask for die Speisekarte. And if you want to pay, you can say Entschuldigung, zahlen bitte. If you need more help with ordering and paying in the restaurant, you can check out this video next, where I dive deeper into some useful phrases. All right, let's take a look at 10 more phrases that you'll need when coming here. Also, remember that you can always rewind this video to practice these and speak along. Now, if you're getting completely stuck, you can of course say Ich spreche kein Deutsch. So if you're coming to Germany, Switzerland or Austria for the first time, or maybe it isn't your first time, but this time you really want to work on your German interactions, let me know in the comments below. Where will you be visiting? Are you thinking of moving here? I can't wait to hear your exciting plans. Having lived in Hong Kong as an expat myself for many years and now being back in Germany, I've really learned to appreciate my home country on a whole new level. So here you have it, survival German for your visit. And if you're interested in learning more from me, I have a full 60-minute free training for beginners linked below. It's the best place to get started if you want to become confident and conversational in German. I would love to see you there. I'll be back next week with another lesson for you guys.