[germanier]

It should be noted that nowadays that pretty much every German retail chain takes credit cards (MasterCard, Visa at least). Lidl, Aldi, Rewe, Kaufland, many Edekas, Media Markt, Ikea, Rossmann, DM, Obi, etc. all take them.

[ianhowson]

The only place I consistently couldn't use a credit card was train tickets, where I had to use the EC card.

Everywhere will accept a credit card, they're just slow about it.