Some things that I had to figure out when I got to Germany
There are many markets that sell stuff from all over the world so generally finding ingredients for most anything is not too terribly difficult. More hampering is the fact that stores close very early and are never open on Sundays. Only stores at the main train station and the airport are open at this time.
Baking soda is considered a chemical, so you will never find this at a grocery store. You find this at the drugstore, or rather the Apotehcary as they refer to it here.
If you have a CA driver's license, you have to get a German one after a year by taking the written and the driving test. See the Embassy page on this for more information. Make sure you get an extension on your US license before six months are up if you do not get a German license.
Deutsche Telecom is still the defacto standard service that all other phone and data service is compared to, so save yourself some trouble and just go through them. To connect to the internet you do not need a service contract to start out. You can just connect call-by-call through special access numbers. I used CompuServe until I got my DSL all hooked up. You are billed by the minute.
The phone jacks here are different. The US uses RJ-11 type plugs and
Germany uses TAE style plugs. The wall jack in your house probably
looks something like this:
The middle socket is where you plug your phone in with a TAE-F plug
and the two on the outside are TAE-N plugs for your data connections.
You can use the phone at the same time as your modem. All you need is
a TAE-N to RJ11 cable which looks something like this:
Signing up for DSL is fairly painless and just as you would expect from the states with a couple exceptions. The DSL service from Deutsche Telecom is called t-DSL. When you sign up for DSL you do not get a flat-rate unless you specify this. Otherwise, you are still getting billed by the minute.
Angelica's and Wordsworth are English only bookstores near the University subway stop.
The Bahnhof has a good selection of English language magazines. Check out the JPOC guide on Munich for more information on magazines at the Bahnhof.
You are not allowed to throw things away. The recycling Stasi will find you.
Its the rules, dontcha know? They take it really seriuosly. See the JPOC guide on this.