In case you don't already know, you can set your keyboard to use the German layout. I have mine so i can hot swap between the us-English layout and German layout. To do so in windows (win7, but I think its the same or similar in other versions) go to the control panel and click 'Region and Language'(or if in category view its 'change keyboards or other input methods' under clock, language and region). Then click on the 'Keyboards and languages' tab and click the 'Change keyboards' button. In the Installed services area click the 'add' button and you can select which ever keyboard layout you want (in this case German). Then go to the "advance key settings" tab highlight one of the languages and click 'change key sequence' to set up how you want to tell windows to use the layout. I personally have the English layout as ctrl+shift+9 and the German one as ctrl+shift+8 so in mere seconds I can change them on the fly. [ becomes ü, ; becomes ö, ' becomes ä and - becomes ß (assuming you are also using an US key layout) Hope this was useful info!

Heh, this sounds like a newspaper headline. London is the host of the 2012 Summer Olympics. When a city has the Olympics it tends to spend a lot of money and time on construction to be able to host it. "takes the gold" is a term used in the Olympics meaning to basically to win first place (The first place winner is awarded a gold metal) so in this sentence its a bit of a pun. So it could be saying that London in preparing for the Olympics, is using sensible construction that is doing very good and something to be proud of.

In your two examples you have different tenses. He managed to climb the tree. = He has already climbed the tree He could climb the tree = He has the ability to climb the tree but he hasn't yet. You could say "I could/can manage to climb" but there no real past tense of 'can'