Try Phex to see if you have the same problems. It connects to many other types of ultrapeers other than LimeWire & is good for finding rarer files. But it doesn't have many language options unfortunately.

With LW, you could set it not to connect at start up. Then open it, let it load & settle for 10 mins or so, then go to File>Connect. Give it lots of time to try to connect. Otherwise you could try the beta but it probably wouldn't make any difference with connecting; http://www.limewire.com/english/content/beta.shtml