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Congrats on living in a major metropolitan area. The other 99% of the world still has to pay for texts.

Eh?
Canada. While big cities used to be the one ones that had "unlimited" plans, nowadays anywhere in the country offers unlimited calling in-country, unlimited text (for many, in-country, for Virgin Mobile it's to anywhere in the world), 2GB+ of data, etc. About $65-70 (say $60-65USD). Oh, wait, they're in the US too.
My understanding is that U.S. carrier rates are lower... but yours still ding you for... text messages? Wow, they've been free here for years. And we're talking places with a population of 7k here. Hell, they're available in the town about 1h away that has a population of 700.

Also free in the parts of Asia I've been to (worldwide text, often enough). Not 100% sure about Europe in general but I believe those are free as well based on people I know in various areas. My German is fairly rusty but I'm pretty sure that Frei-SMS und Frei-MMS follows that.

New Zealand... Texts included (as well as to Aus)
Australia... SMS unlimited in-country

So, by 99% of the the world... I'm guessing you mean with your carrier in USA? Who is being myopic?

Blau.de is an ePlus reseller and ePlus is the slowest network in Germany. A lot of areas are still EDGE, many are normal speed UMTS (384kbit/s) and only a few are UMTS/3G. A kind of "official" reseller of eplus is called Simyo. They offer 1 Gig data for € 9,95 valif for a month. If the gig is used up just buy a new card for 10 Euros. No plan whatsover.

o2 is the second of the two smaller providers in Germany. Their coverage ist a bit worse than that of eplus, but in urban areas their network is usuallly faster. o2 has a prepaid plan as well called Fonic. Their rate is 2,50 Euros per day. USB stick costs 60 Euros.

Vodafone and T-Mobile are the two big providers and usually offer the best network coverage and best speed. But they are more expensive. A day with a maximum of 1 Gb costs 4,95 Euros (Vodafone Websessions) or 4,95 ;-) (T-Mobile Websessions). Vodafone has 7 days with 1 Gb data for 9,95 as well.

USB sticks should be no problem. If you buy one at the phone store you'll get them some Euros cheaper, but in most cases they will have a simlock, but you can go to an electronics store and buy one without a simlock. That should be the easiest part ...

After a short check there are no pages in English on their websites (vodafone.nl has them).

I was in Germany a month ago. I picked up a little usb dongle from the Vodafone store for 30 Euro with their Vodafone Mobile Connect service on a prepaid basis. Plugged it in, installed their software [which sucks] and got online for 10 euro per week. http://www.vodafone.de/privat/tarife/datentarife-websessions.html

As I guess that you prefer getting UMTS, I would advise you to check which provider has got a good signal at the place where you're going. My experience is that if you are not in a city, the provider can make a big difference. There are even many areas where you have no umts signal at all. In general you can get unlimited data plans for all networks for about 20€ per month on a prepaid basis by on of the many resellers (as already mentioned blau.de , my favorite kabeldeutschland.de or all the others).
Here are some maps:
http://t-map.t-mobile.de/tmap/jsp/T-Map.jsp?usergroup=end_user&functionalArea=umts_coverage
http://netmap.vodafone.de/cover4internet/initParams.do;jsessionid=3CF18E6EC4F00AD06FAED35715244F7C.umtsmapi1?windowsSystem=false&nav=true&nav4=false&nav5up=true&IE=false&IE4=false&IE5up=false&initialized=true&appprofile=UMTS-Maps
http://eis03sn1.eplus-online.de/geo/portal/umts

Vodafone Websessions: Walk into the Vodafone store at the airport €30 for the UMTS (3G) usb stick, €5/day (capped at 1GB transfer volume) or 10€/week (similarly capped at 1GB). The only problem might be that they don't have the package and will have to send it to your hotel/address. It's pay as you go, after login you have to enter your credit card info.Similar offers are available from T-Online (web'n'walk €50 with a usb stick including €10 on the pre paid account.). O2 and Eplus are generally cheaper but their 3G coverage is often not as good as Telekom or Vodafone.

Of course there are tons of other options available.

simyo is 24c/MB so not cheap.
Vodafone is no-contract, 19,99€ upfront and prepaid 15min/2h/24h/7days, where 7 days= 7,99€ for max 1GB

http://www.t-mobile.de/funkversorgung/inland

http://www.vodafone.de/hilfe-support/netz-uebertragung-netzabdeckung/108099.html

http://shop2.o2online.de/nw/produkte/beratung/abdeckung/popup/pageframe.html

http://eis03sn1.eplus-online.de/evportal/portal/umts

You can either get the Mac OS X driver for this card direct from Vodafone in Germany, here.

Or, Nova Media have a package that adds support not just for this card, but a range of other 3G cards as well as 3G and 2G phones. I'm not overly sure why, as Mac OS X comes with builtin support for 2G connections via a long list of phones already (as well as AddressBook and Calendar iSync support). And there are a number of free dial-up scripts out there to support some of the newer phones until Apple fill the gap.

I've already tried the default Vodafone driver, as one of my work colleagues has one of these cards and uses it to VPN into his company network when he's out and about. The install was a snap, just taking a few minutes. No reboot was necessary, and I was up and running. I was quite impressed. When the coverage improves (it's patchy at the moment) and the cost comes down a bit, I'll probably get one.

Macka