Kobo never said they would open retail stores over here, and actually they are not doing that.

What they said they'd do is to sell their devices via an online retailer, one of the lesser-known ones, I'd say. They wanted to start selling on October 1, but emails people recently sent to that retailer revealed that there's a delay of about 5 to 6 weeks (see Kobo Deutschland on Facebook and the German forum over here). So it's more like mid-November.