I was asked this week if the shops are open in Germany on Good Friday.

It’s a simple answer: no.

Even on Gründonnerstag (Maundy Thursday) many shops are required to shut earlier than usual, with supermarkets that usually stay open until 9pm, 10pm or even midnight on other days closing their doors at 8pm and not opening again until Saturday morning.

And when they do open there will be a last-minute rush for Osterhasen and generally a lot of people stocking up before everything shuts again for another two days.

With even the bakeries closed on Good Friday, the petrol stations will be doing a good trade and are probably the best place to go if you run out of anything over the weekend.

It’s always nice to be returning from holiday or a weekend away on a Sunday, as there are very few lorries on the roads.  The reason for this is something called the “Wochenendfahrverbot”, a part of the German road-users law (StVO) which prohibits lorries from using the roads on Sunday before 10pm.

There are some exceptions, such as those delivering fresh produce, but in general it means that the roads, especially the motorways, are fairly empty and flow faster.

But what about on Good Friday?

When I was asked this yesterday, I thought I might be in for a lot of research, but in the end the answer was simple.  Just look in the relevant paragraph of the StVO.  That paragraph is known as §30 Abs. 4 – and contains a very straight forward answer.

Good Friday is listed by name as a day on which the Fahrverbot applies for all of Germany.

And before the same question comes up again next week – Easter Monday is too.

“Easter Pack 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:

• Palmsonntag
• Karfreitag
• Ostern
• Die Auferstehung

To find out more, visit the AllThingsGerman Download Store.