Germany is probably quite a bit culturally closer to Britain then say France, certainly my experience is that is has tended to be much easier to get things done in Germany as a brit then in France.
The war thing is a complete irreverence to 95% of the people you will interact with, and the 5% are just tossers anyway, you get them everywhere.
Cannot really speak to power jobs as that is not really my bag, but generally there is just not a problem working there, big companies have some strange (to UK eyes) paperwork expectations like the Arbeitszeugnis a sort of formal reference letter that really does not translate well to anything we have for example, but smaller firms will often ignore that, especially if you are contracting rather then going for full time employee.
Seriously, the place is just a foreign country, and one actually quite close to the UK in a lot of ways, you want properly foreign you need to go way further afield.
Regards, Dan.