Kidding. Tenses aren't that bad but those splitting verbs... I hate them. And this syntax. It's a nightmare.

English is easy.

There isn't much demand for words expressing politeness

Agreed. German articles and grammatical genders are a nuisance. Time is a woman, cat is a woman, war is a man, and horse is a thing. I much prefer English in that respect.

I wish that the genders made more sense. I make up little rules for some of them in my head (guys like dogs, dogs are "der"; women like cats, cats are "die") but why on earth would a balloon be masculine?

Because it's thrusting up into the sky .

It's even worse when in your mothertongue time is a thing, war is a thing, horse is a man...and only cat is a woman too...and then you involuntarily transfer this knowledge into the other language. But that's what makes us (foreigners) funny...
No German native speaker that I know minds if you use the wrong gender or your noun etc. declension isn't perfect. Relax.

Or full of hot air

Except perhaps my German instructor

Because if you have two of them you can imagine?

I agree; a balloon is a thing..

Trousers are female and skirts are male. I have nothing else to say.

Yeah they dont mind, but it matters when u need ur language certificate.
I find the genders in German a pain!

And I find the pronunciation of English /r/ a pain. Still, I don't think English native speakers should care. It's my problem.

The northern/eastern German /r/ is really cute. I find the Allemanic /r/ much easier (and it's handy for speaking to Swiss people) but I adore the one you probably have... when it's a young lady saying it, of course...

double r sounds in German are absolutely impossible for me, e.g. "reparieren". in fact, as a midwesterner Ami I roll all of my l's and r's, and could spend an hour just trying to cleanly spit out "lehrer" or "lehrerin".

Sure, but I am a translator (EN>PL as for now) and would like to start translating from German at some point.

In Polish time is masculine, war is feminine, horse and cat are masculine, squirrel is feminine. Chair and balloon are masculine. Soup is feminine. Child, window, sun are neuter. And we have seven cases so perhaps I'm not in a place to complain about German but, you know, life is nicer when you can grumble a little bit .

As for me, the British r is pain in the *ss, American one is more pronounceable. Still, I'm an absolute fan of British RP.

What I find quite difficult to pronounce is the Dutch g. But I love Dutch sooo much. It's my favourite language although I know it just a tiny bit.

I'm sure you'll get them right, sooner or later. The more newspapers, magazines, books you'll read, the more you'll know them by heart.
We have "only" 5 cases and I would still pity anyone who'd try to learn Romanian. Of course, compared with Finnish (16 cases as far as I remember) we're nice....
Practice is everything. (and lack of "inhibitions"...)
I've always followed my father's advice: when it comes to foreign languages, courage is everything.

Do not forget all the man like
DER Zeitabschnitt
DER Moment
DER Kater
DER Hund (aber die Hündin / Hundedame)
DIE Kriegserklärung
DIE Kriegshandlung
DIE Kriegsattacke
DIE Kriegsführung
DER Gaul
DER Wallach
DER Hengst