I'm going to try to pay it off as quickly as I can. You've got to be kidding.
Simple interest is the only way to fly.
There are a number of things that you can do. You can exchange it in this country or have it sent and transferred to German currency through a bank. The banks will give you the best rates of exchange, recognizing that the exchange rates bounce around from day to day. It used to be advantageous to charge things abroad, but now many of the credit card companies are charging a couple of service points, and that advantage melted away. A reader has written me, enclosing an article indicating that many older people are buying living trusts and paying substantial sums of money for them, when in their circumstance it made no sense.