I just recently burned the .iso for 3.3 myself and didn't have to use an 800MB disk...the distro worked fine for me on a 700MB CD-R, no worries! Also, did you get the German version of the distro? I have had no language problems (granted, I took some German in high school); it's defaulted on mine to English. Did you check the check-sum with the .md5 files after downloading the .iso?

/edit Forgot, I intended to agree with you about the boot message or lack thereof. /edit off


'Goon