Excerpts from Robert Brown's Letters Home:

Here, most people are Studenten at the major university. When I walk down the street, every café has at least fifteen to twenty students just sitting and talking. Cafés are not as they are in the States, expensive like Starbucks. Cafés are like the McDonalds of Germany; they are on every Ecke, each with their own special attitude. Der Beck is the French café with fresh baked rolls. Then, they have Mr. Bleck - that's the one that serves coffee American style (made with coffee filters). It's nice to go there; everything is in English - a nice taste of home. But to try and describe every café would take all year -- plus, I haven't even had the chance to get to all of them yet.

The place where I've found that the language barrier is non-existant is in the bakery. Here, if I don't know the word, just pointing works fine; I can get just about anything in the store. Then I add a "Danke," at the end and off I go, a complete success at buying bread. As small as this task sounds, I do it every day, and it makes me feel competent.