Grüße Katja,

A good place for meeting other German learners is "german.about.com". They have plenty of resources and very helpful moderators and forum users who will answer any language questions you have. There is also a wide selection of online games and fun topic discussions.
They have an extensive list of German loan words in English: loan words


BTW, Mark Twain wrote a great essay entitled 'The Awful German Language'. If you don't know it I'm sure you'll enjoy it:
German speech

The Awful German Language