Churches and chauvinism

This post is going to be a bit more arduous than normal, because this keyboard (in France now) has the a, z, q, w, m, ?, , ; . : / ( ) @ and ! in different locations. Why can there not be some kind of international Computer Keyboard Council that enforces uniformity in these matters?
But then, as much as it is irritating, these kinds of small differences constitute half the fun of travelling. You arrive in a new country, and you go to perform some kind of mundane task that is normally no cause for comment, and somehow the inhabitants of wherever you are have contrived to make this thing in some sense foreign. It's nice - this will sound incredibly naive perhaps - to discover that foreign countries are still very different, down to the details; that they are not Americanized tourist playgrounds which only retain their traditions and differences as some kind of quaint funfair for people to come look at. In Austria, we saw people wearing lederhosen in downtown Vienna - not because they were paid to, but because it's just what they like to wear.
So to update, we have just been in Italy, and now we are in France. I liked Italy, largely because Italy seemed to like me. People were mostly incredibly friendly and very patient with my limited and mangled Italian.
Which brings me to another tangent:
the language issue. We met a nice French Canadian guy in our Vicenza hostel, and we asked him which language he thought would be the best to learn. He replied, 'english'. But I can't help feeling a little rude when I go in to a shop and immediately ask if the assistant speaks English. Even if it is so widely spoken, it seems a little chauvinistic to be so monolingual.
Anyway, Italy: beautiful, crumbly, religious. Very religious. We went to a church to look at the architecture, and it was full of people praying and genuflecting. There was some kind of holy thing - I have no idea what, it looked like some kind of metal plate - that people were touching and praying over. It was all very hypnotic and intense, and more than a little disturbing.
It's interesting that the Italian churches that we went to were the first we've seen that actually had people praying in them - the first 'living' churches. Everywhere else, we saw buildings that you could say 'used to be' churches, but are now simply historical relics that attract tourists. The most extreme example was St. Vitus' cathdral in Prague: crowds of tourists waited outside for the mass to finish, a few harrassed-looking believers trickled out just before 12pm and then the place was instantly flooded with people taking pictures, wandering around listening to audio guides, following tour groups, speaking loudly.
Interesting, and a little sad. While it's reassuring to see that the Church is losing its hypnotic grip on the populace, the influx of tourists in many places seems to destroy the character of a beautiful sacred space. And I can only imagine what the remaining congregations of these famous churches feel about the whole thing.