Hi all,
Thought I'd report on a recent trip to Germany (Koln/Dusseldorf).
I had visions of buying a blau sim card at a Saturn store, BUT, I arrived on a Sunday and didn't realize virtually all stores except for restaurants/bars are closed.
In Cologne I happened upon a shop in the main train station that was open, and bought the "best" sim card that they had to offer:
from ortel mobile.
http://www.ortelmobile.de
It cost 20E which included 10E credit.
Calls to the US were 0.09E / min even less than dialing local! (which was 0.15 E/min--now it says 0.19?). However, though I didn't try it, it appears that incoming calls from US were 0.69E / min -- I got around this by using rebtel.
Also the website is relatively very good (with selection of languages). It uses the E-Plus network and you could buy topup cards at stores that sold them as well (again, see website for details), at 15 or 30E increments. I was able to use EDGE to download email onto my Treo 650 (I assume using E-Plus) which appeared to be pricey (~1+ E / session) for not a lot of Kb.