Attempting to cook in Germany

As most of you know I am not the most "domestic" person out there. But I am improving slowly as the weeks go on. My latest attempt at this was to bake some chocolate chip cookies and some peppermint bark for christmas. Both are relatively easy recipes that I have made before. The decision to make these treats came about for a few reasons. The first of those reasons is that I really missed a good chocolate cookie. The second reason is that we are trying to rid our apartment of the smell of deep fried curry. It has slowly become worse as the cooking goes on. The third reason is pretty simple, I am bored. So I looked up the recipe on the internet and made my shopping list. After going to our local grocery store I found sugar, 'brown' sugar (not the moist kind we have, it is literally brown sugar), flour and eggs. My main problem was going to be chocolate chips, baking soda and vanilla extract. For the peppermint bark it was the chocolate and candy canes. Pretty much the whole recipe. So I start the hunt for the rest of the ingredients. I was informed that for baking soda look in the cleaning aisle (but no luck) the chocolate I found in cooking chocolate bars (so the cookies are now chocolate chunk). I finally decided to go to the gourmet food section at one of the local department stores (they are the closest thing to a Hiller's I have found). There I managed to find Arm & Hammer baking soda (for the bargain basement price of $5 a box) and vanilla extract (I had to debate between real extract for $6 or vials of imitation for .89 cents...guess which i chose!). My big find there were real candy canes! They were in a special section and you had to pay for them seperately but I got them!!!
So I was ready to start my cooking.... or so I thought. I forgot butter. So I ran to the grocery store to find sticks of butter, but had to settle for a brick of butter. yum. So my measurements were made in a used and cleaned out yogurt cup (!) and a very small spoon that I think is close to a table spoon!
So I am starting to get very very good at improving and feel I could make a meal from twigs and berries...or something close to that!
So those are just some of my adventures in cooking here.