My first washing machine experience

I had to do laundry today. Easy task at home. Not so easy here. THe machines are in the basement of the building and 5 flights of stairs! Megan assured me that it was easy. Ofcourse she told me later that she just pushes random buttons! The washer is not top load like I'm used to. Also, there were no knobs like I'm used to. AND the words were in german. There was a machine next to mine that were running and I was trying to see where the knobs where set at. I was able to imitate the celcius but the rest was a mystery. I decided to push a green button to see what happen. Luckily it was the right on. There was an indicator that shows the minutes. At first I couldn't find rhyme or reason to it. The numbers were going up and then eventually it started to count down. It didn't look like there was much water so I couldn't tell if it was working properly. I finally figured out that I pushed the righ button to start it although I just went with whatever settings the machine had before. The dryer was the same situation! The knobs were not familiar and ofcourse all in german. Again, I just pushed a random button. It worked out fine but I think it was just luck! I really thought they should have posted some signs in english!