David, don't let your preference for either FAA or JAA be influenced by the attractiveness/readability of the course material. First and foremost, you need to decide what your future flying is going to be like. Particularly the first letter or first two letters that are going to be in the callsign of the aircraft you're going to fly.
If you're going to fly in Germany for fun, with a limited number of hours per year (say 50 maximum) then you'll probably rent, or buy into a group share. This means a D-reg, so you need a JAA license.
If you're going to fly in Germany but you plan on serious touring, including an IR, it may (note: "may") be advantageous for you to get an FAA PPL, and add an FAA IR to that. You also need to buy an N-reg outright, or a share in an N-reg, because there are only very few N-reg planes available for hire in Europe. There are two advantages to doing this over a JAA PPL/IR: the maintenance regime for an N-reg is less complicated, particularly the paperwork side of things, and an FAA IR is, at the moment, easier to obtain than a JAA IR.
If you're going to do a (JAA or FAA) ATPL in the near future then license-wise it doesn't matter which PPL you get: any ICAO PPL will work as the entry for an FAA or JAA CPL/ATPL. But you're probably going to do some serious hour building, either here in Europe or in the US, and you need the proper license for that.
Flight training, be that JAA or FAA, is significantly cheaper in the US, even if you factor in extras such as the flight over there, M1 VISA, TSA, accommodation. But for a fair comparison, you need to factor in ALL costs, which almost nobody does. But a fair comparison should also include things like travel costs from your house to the local airport.
So if you have decided that you're going to train in the US (either JAA or FAA) try to spend as little money here in Europe as possible. TSA and the M1 VISA costs cannot be avoided, and you will also want to obtain the proper medical(s) (JAA class II, FAA class III) before you spend a lot of money, but for the rest, do it all in the US.
1st. Yes it is possible but only on a very few locations. From memory there's a place in Paris and one at Gatwick, that's it. And very expensive too. Whereas in the US any flight school can administer the FAA PPL exam for a modest fee, if necessary directly upon your arrival there. So don't bother trying to do it here.
2nd. If you want to that's very well possible. Obviously you need to go to a school which is able to offer you both JAA and FAA training. In addition to the normal JAA stuff, here's a short list of the extra things you need to do/have:
- I'm not entirely sure, but you might need an FAA class II medical instead of FAA class III. Anybody can confirm this?
- There are a few flying skills that are part of the FAA PPL syllabus, but not in the JAA one. Turns around a point for instance. Make sure these are covered.
- The FAA PPL includes the NQ by default, while JAA makes it optional. So five of your hours, including some x-country, and five of your solo landings need to be done at night.
- You need to do the single FAA PPL ground exam in addition to the JAA PPL ground exams.
- You need to do the FAA skills test in addition to the JAA skills test. Unless you're extremely lucky and able to find a dual JAA/FAA authorized examiner.
3rd. See earlier points. Don't do this.
4th. There's one in California. Anglo-American Aviation I think it's called. All the others are indeed in Florida.