There's a difference between an accent and a dialect. When I studied German in college I was told me that I wouldn't be able to freely use it in Germany because there's somewhere between 165 and 168 different dialects of German. However, when I lived in Germany, I found while these dialects exist, it can be difficult to find people that can still speak them. I figured progress and/or TV had flattened the language with some uniformity, though I could still recognized where people were from because of the accent.
--Mike