Beware of the pain when setting up a company in German
I was raised in Germany, live next to Frankfurt. My wife and I decided to set up our incorporated consultancy company here. What we are going through might not be the same for you, but it could be similar.
First: be warned. If you want to serve Europe, think twice if you absolutely need to have a German presence.
It's been 9 months now that we are working to set up a functional company.
1.) It took about 3 months until the company registration went through. You have to spend a few hundred Euro at a notary to register it.
2.) Renting office space was the only quick and easy thing
3.) It took 4 months until we got connected to the internet. Telekom cancelled the contract because "all lines are full and we can't connect you". I heard about "no connection available" several times from others. O2 didn't cancel our contract, but was ready to wait for 4 months until they could lease a line from Telekom.
4.) That doesn't mean that we have Internet now. The specialized router was sent by DHL, which is on strike indefinitely.
5.) Since the beginning of 2014, strikes are a major problem in this country when travelling. Lufthansa and the Deutsche Bahn (trains) are guaranteed to strike when you need them most. Be aware that instead of your fast connection to Berlin from Frankfurt, you end up spending hours in busses to get to the destination. Last year, getting to my main client was a weekly struggle as I could not always go by car.
6.) To be able to write invoices, you need a tax number. After 5 months of waiting (wait time after we officially set up business in our Town, after the official registration of the company itself) the financial authorities finally sent us the questionnaire (after asking 2 times) that will eventually lead to a tax number (I guess one more month). However, this is only the German tax number. If you want to do business with the rest of the EU, you need a VAT-ID which will take another month after we got our national number.