Und wie schmeckt dein Akzent? (or My Life as a Cultural Ninja-in-Training)

I live in a city of 150,000 which receives 3 million tourists per year.  Needless to say, at any given time this place is crawling with foreigners.  The result is a lot of Germans who will immediately switch to speaking English if you show any sign of weakness in your German.  While I am sure that this is wonderful for the non-German-speakers and lazy people, if I wanted to speak English this year, I would've stayed in America.  As a result, I find myself trying hard to pretend that I am German.

Despite one of my tandems' insistence that I look nothing like Germans and speak terrible German, trying to blend in normally works.  Even now, people approach me asking for directions on the trams or help with buying tickets.  Sometimes, the people pick up on my accent and give me a funny look.  "You're a foreigner!" some will declare, as if that's a surprise to both of us.  I usually want to respond with "Echt???? Seit wann??" but instead I simply explain where I came from and why I live in Germany.

Normally, I can tell when my accent is about to out me as an American.  German has some very throaty sounds.  In this region, people tend to pronounce words like "ich" with a more "sh" sound, so I can get by a little easier.  However, sometimes I can just feel my accent pushing the words to the front of my mouth.  One time I complained about being able to "feel my accent" to my German friend.  "And how does your accent taste?" she asked.  "Awful," I said.  The good news is, I am slowly starting to feel that death grip of my American accent on my German is fading.  I don't mind people knowing that I'm American, I just forever dread those moments where Germans switch to English, assuming that I cannot carry the conversation in German any longer.

Despite my ever-present accent, there have been moments of success.  One man, who looked eerily like my paternal grandpa, approached me on the street and proceeded to tell me that I looked young and that he had a present for me.  He pulled out a book titled "Fragen junger Leute, Praktische Antworten" and told me that it was helpful to his children and that he wanted to pass it on to me.  I didn't know what to say, so I accepted the book.  He walked away happy and I walked away horribly confused, but perhaps the fact that he never realized I was an American is my greatest triumph as a cultural ninja to date.