The trains to the Hessentag today (Whit Monday) are running to a special bank holiday timetable.

Although this has been extended for the Hessentag, it still means that until 11am the trains only run every 30 minutes.

Which I why when I arrived at the station this morning, this was the information board that greeted me:

The same timetable will be in operation next Sunday (19th June).

“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.

Pfingsten is the weekend known in English as Whitsun or Pentecost. The Sunday and Monday are bank holidays in the whole of Germany. It falls 50 days after Easter.

Pfingsten celebrates the moment when the Holy Ghost descended to Jesus’ disciples, allowing them to be understood by everyone that they talked to. To the listeners they appeared to be speaking in their native language.

The weekend is often used by families to have a longer weekend away. Some parts of Germany have school holidays that start on this weekend.

To hear a simple explanation and a short discussion in German, listen to the podcast:

Audio clip: Adobe Flash Player (version 9 or above) is required to play this audio clip. Download the latest version here. You also need to have JavaScript enabled in your browser.

(Press the “play” button to listen to the podcast)

Download the MP3 file | Comment in the forum

Subscribe to the podcast | Listen by telephone