“Public Holidays 1″ is a collection of 4 transcripts, each in their own PDF file. The pack is a ZIP file containing the 4 PDFs and is available from the AllThingsGerman Download Store.

The transcripts in this pack are:

• Maifeiertag
• Christi Himmelfahrt
• Pfingsten
• Fronleichnam

To find out more, visit the AllThingsGerman Download Store.

With the General Election in the UK only a week away, you may be forgiven for asking how someone who does not live in the country is able to vote.  The answer is that, like me, they probably are not able to.

To vote in the UK your name has to be on the electoral roll, and to be on that you have to fulfil certain conditions.  One of these used to be an address in the UK and the normal method of registration is still via a form that is delivered to all households between September and November each year.

But even if you registered on a UK address and then spent most of your time out of the country there was a distinct downside to being on the electoral role: jury service.  Since the members of a court jury are selected at random from the electoral roll, being on it you run the risk of being summoned for jury service and having to travel back to the UK at short notice – something a German employer may not understand.

Now, however, times have started to change and much like other countries UK citizens are being allowed to vote even if they live overseas – at least in the General Election.

To do so, you need to register as a voter and have your registration counter-signed by another British citizen living abroad.  You will also need to chose between a proxy or postal vote – and apply for these far enough in advance of the election (not easy with this election being called so close to the actual voting day).

And yet these new rules will not help me, as there is one important limit – you must not have lived outside the UK for more than 15 years – exactly the amount of time that I have now lived in Germany.

So although I will following the results of the General Election next week and parts of the campaign have even made the news in Germany, I shall not be able to vote.

This is a question I had never really thought about until I was asked it – can you get tickets for the next day from the ticket machines for the trains in Germany?

I think the simplest answer is: “not normally, but it depends on the type of machine”.

Sounds confusing?  I didn’t think it was going to be, until I started looking at the ticket machines in our area a bit closer.

The one that I use most often is for the U-Bahn – the train to Frankfurt.  Here the answer is most definitely “no”.  You can buy tickets for groups and for the whole day, even the so-called “Hessenticket”, but only for the current day.

However just round the corner is a similar machine for the bus stop.  Strangely, this one has different options, including one to buy a ticket for the whole week, meaning 7 days starting on the day of purchase.  Some machines of this sort even allow you to buy a card that lasts a month, but again starting to day.   In the RMV area a “month” is considered to be until the day in the following month with the same number, so a monthly ticket that starts on 23rd April is valid until and including 23rd May.

And yet, the only machine I know here where I can actually buy a ticket for a future date is at the main station for main-line trains.

Thankfully there are two other ways to buy your local train tickets in advance.  One is via the online ticket shop – assuming that there is enough time for it to arrive by post.  The other, perhaps simpler, is to go to a local agent who can issue tickets for the different zones for the date of your choice.

This not only saves finding the change for the machine, but if you are unsure about which tarif or zones you need, there is someone there to help you as well!