I’m about to sound like the ignorant American I am, so I apologize in advance! We’re looking at a trip to Germany, and possibly Prague, and we’ve noticed that a lot of the hotel names are French and a couple hotels that aren’t named in French have replied to comments with things like “Bonjour! etc etc” What’s up with this? Is French just the most commonly spoken common language, even in Germany and Czechia? (I know that Germany and Czechia have their own languages, of course.) Or is it something else?
Some, like tschüß, servus or ciao are informally used by some Czechs, others like guten tag, bon jour, dobro došli are understood, but not used unless in some joke way. It would be pretty weird to encounter any of them when talking to e. g. hotel staff, though, unless there’s an expectation you speak that language.