Sunday: the day everything is closed

What you need to know

At home Sunday is the day the shops are busiest. In much of Europe it is the day trading is banned. The difference is not a habit of shopkeepers: the ban is set by law, and the shop answers for breaking it, not the customer.

For a newcomer one thing follows, and no admission letter warns you about it: your list of errands for the first days cannot be the list you would make at home. Land on a Saturday evening and, until Monday, you have only what you brought with you.

How it works

1. The ban is general, the exceptions are listed. Poland's labour inspectorate names them plainly: fuel stations, pharmacies and pharmacy points, veterinary clinics, outlets inside hotels; bakeries, patisseries and ice-cream shops if they sell their own products; places where catering is the main activity; online shops and vending machines; flowers and candles near cemeteries. Trading is also allowed where the owner stands behind the counter in person, on their own account and without employees.
2. Trading Sundays are named by law, not by the shop. In Poland they are the Sundays before Christmas, the Sunday before Easter and the last Sundays of January, April, June and August. The rest are closed, and no sales campaign changes that.
3. In Germany Sunday is the statutory weekly rest day. The labour ministry puts it as a general prohibition on employment; working on such a day is an exception, and only on the conditions the law has set.
4. Public holidays are a separate list, and not the one you know. In France the holidays that apply to the private sector are published by the government portal. A holiday in your new country is not a holiday at home, and on that day offices and universities are shut just as the shops are.

What usually goes wrong

People arrive at the weekend and find a closed city. A SIM card, bedding, a week of food, cash from a machine — all of it is weekday work. A Saturday arrival means two days without any of it.

Sunday is read as a quiet day rather than a non-working one. It is not only shops: the offices where you book address registration keep their own opening hours, and Sunday is not among them.

A public holiday is confused with the university break. These are two calendars. On a public holiday everything is closed; during a break the university may be open or not.

The first visit to an office is planned for a holiday week. The deadline does not pause for it — there are simply no appointment slots left.

Where this is stated officially

• National Labour Inspectorate of Poland — the ban on trading on Sundays and public holidays, the list of exceptions, and the list of trading Sundays.
• Federal Ministry of Labour and Social Affairs, Germany — working-time protection: Sunday as the weekly rest day and the general prohibition on employment.
• Service Public (France) — public holidays and bridge days in the private sector.

How to check the rule has not changed

Look on the site of the authority that sets the rule, not the site of a retail chain: the chain publishes its opening hours, the state sets the ban. Trading Sundays change from year to year, so check them at the start of the year instead of trusting last year's list.