SimonG: Most international shipping to Germany is done by DHL nowadays. And I can't say anything bad about them.
I can! By now it makes 3 times that I have ordered something that was shipped by DHL, and
every single time they managed to first send it to a wrong address. It's also the experience I hear from most other people I mentioned it to. The deliciously ironic part about it? I live practically next to a DHL distribution centre, I can see it when I look out the window. Yet still they seem to be unable to find my house.
My sister once sent a package from one branch of her company to another, both of them in two different districts of the same city (Zurich). It was delivered about a week later. DHL sent it to Germany first, before sending it back. In order to manage that, they added an extra zero to the zip code, since Swiss codes are one digit shorter...
Conclusion: stick to UPS...