Your story reminds me of diving a French car for the first time. No knob or lever can be found in the usual spaces and in the end you always end up giving a turn signal when you try to use the windscreen wiper.
I am using the German QWERTZ most of the time and found the layout rather reasonable. I once tried to learn the neo layout which had the most used letters on the middle row, but you really only can use that at home so I stopped after a week or two as it did not really seemed worth the effort.
I did something very similar via netcup tiny vps, nginx and wireguard. I could post my setup notes tomorrow if someone needs them.