Never been to Scandinavia, but of the European countries I've been to (the non-British Isles ones, obviously), the most success I had getting around on pure English was in the Netherlands.

Also it's really hard to be put on the spot suddenly. I mean, I'm fluent in English but find suddenly having to talk really awkward, because I mostly use it in writing.

Now, that I believe, because my perception was that while some of these people had not a clue what I was saying, others were clearly trying to communicate back to me in German + sign, which led me to believe that they understood my English, my signing, or both. Which is part of the reason that, while I have no interest in learning to speak any other languages, once I can read German relatively fluently, I'd like to improve my listening comprehension. I feel like there would be a huge payoff for the lower (compared to speaking) effort in learning to understand spoken German, even if I still have to sign and repeat myself a lot in English to make myself understood. Also, then selenak won't have to summarize YouTube videos for me. ;)

(I'm also really bad at understanding other people's signing, I have to admit. If I could just improve my comprehension of a number of other languages, I would be much better off, as a person who likes to travel.)