From a modest amount of research, it appears that most stores are closed many or most or all Sundays, and that any sort of noisy activity is forbidden both on Sundays and national holidays, as well as between 7pm-7am every day. One example I saw was vacuuming in your own home.
Can someone who lives or has lived in Germany tell me how this works? When I was working, I had to stuff all my DIY activities as well as cleaning and laundry etc. into the weekend. I can’t imagine how I would have managed if I only had one day a week to do all that stuff, except that DIY stuff would have been a complete non-starter.
This seems to me quite invasive and paternalistic. Is this one of those things that Americans would never understand how well it works for everyone because it obliges you to think about other people every evening plus one whole day per week?
What is the reality of living under these quiet laws?
Stores do close sometimes. This did mean that if, for example, you wanted to buy a carton of milk at 3 a.m. then you were out of luck unless you headed over to a convenience store within however many metres of a train station which was therefore legally allowed to be open.
As for vacuuming in the middle of the night, the concern there is pissing off your neighbours. I don’t know who would complain about you vacuuming on the Sabbath or what they could legally do about it, that’s an interesting question.
Stores and such are closed on Sundays/public holidays, except as noted near train stations and the like; also, there are in some cities (like Cologne, where I live) certain small stores (kiosks) that carry some day-to-day goods as well as newspapers and refrigerated beverages, which can be open on holidays and late at night.
As for the quiet times, well, certain activities, especially those making lots of noise outside—mowing the lawn and so on—are definitely frowned upon, and neighbors may make a noise complaint if parties go on too loudly for too long into the night. But I vacuumed yesterday (Sunday), and wouldn’t expect anybody to complain—most people understand that you’ve only got so much free time in which to do these sorts of household chores. And even if there’s a complaint, the usual chain of escalation would probably be, passive-aggressive note in the hallway, complaint to building management, passive-aggressive note in the hallway with official management stamp on it, and only then would anybody bother to take any further action, like actually going to the person responsible for the noise.
Loud or sustained DIY work on Sunday, though, I would be careful about, and probably inform the neighbors beforehand.
I live in Germany, but I have a house, so I can be as loud as I want indoors. I can’t mow the yard on Sunday, though. That really hasn’t been too big of an inconvenience for me. Stores closing early and never opening on Sundays is a bit annoying, but it’s not too big of a deal. I can always go on the base or drive over to Czech if I really need to do some shopping on a Sunday.
Variations on ‘quiet laws’, and Sunday closing, isn’t unique to Germany - I’ve heard they are particularly strict on what you can and can’t do in Switzerland at certain times, and we have noise restrictions on Sundays in the UK (although I’m not sure how many people are actually aware of the details). I successfully complained to the council about some waste collection services that were emptying local glass recycling at 7am on a Sunday - one email and they stopped.
When my BIL was in the military and stationed in Germany, he told us that at his off-base rented house the neighbors complained to him that he was washing his car in the driveway on a Sunday. Doesn’t sound “loud”, just something someone could complain about.
At a carwash. Same as the US. They just don’t use their driveways. All the soap and chemicals get into the environment. Germans don’t like chemicals getting into the ground, I think. They don’t allow weed killer here either. That’s probably the biggest inconvenience. There is a place just across the border in Czech that sells Round Up. It’s like going to Mexico for fireworks…
The other big one is remote start on cars. In Alaska, remote start is not just allowed, it is encouraged. Hell, we even leave our cars running while we go in the store. In Germany, your car isn’t allowed to run if you’re not in it. And even if you are in it, you can only let it run for like less than a minute if you’re parked. I hate that. Especially on cold mornings. I miss getting into a warm car.
Also, with many exceptions, the work week in Germany is shorter, there is more annual vacation time, the social safety net, including medical, is more extensive, public transportation is cheap and efficient, and incomes are higher. So more people have more leisure time and less onerous work, so have more opportunities to do household stuff and shopping during weekdays and 9-5.
Look for what they call a Standheizung (English: Block Heater), it heats the car without the running motor. Or it heats the motor before you start it, so it runs smoothly and is more efficient.
The idea of not opening shops on Weekends (yes, also on Saturdays, at least in the afternoon) and finishing work at a reasonable time (yes, also when you work in a shop) goes back to the Church (both of them: Catholic and Protestant) and the Trade Unions. The Church wanted people to honour the Day Of The Lord (as a conservative politician said without a hint of irony in the 80s, when they started relaxing those rules: Sonntag is the Tag des Herren, nicht der Tag des Hertie, which you could translate as Sunday is the Day of the Lord, not the day of WalMart. That was an argument for not relaxing those rules). And Trade Unions wanted their affiliates (and everybody else, for that matter, or else they would have an unfair advantage in the labour market) to have a better life and more leisure time. Their slogan was a masterpiece: Samstag gehört Vati mir! (English: Saturday Daddy belongs to me! Deutscher Gewerkschaftsbund is the German Trade Union Federation).
So you got a perfect storm: Churches and Trade Unions fighting for different reasons for the same goal. They were quite succesful for a while. Today that is all much relaxed, but there are still things you should not do.
It also helped that the German bourgeois mentality appretiates calm (Ruhe, like in Ruhe und Ordnung), you are not supposed to make noise at unholy hours, be it musik or DIY or lawn mowing.
The shops closing at 18.00 and on 13.00 on Saturdays and not opening Sundays at all (except close to train stations, airports and gas stations because of travellers’ needs) was a pain in the ass, but that is over. The rest is quite pleasing actually. Civilised even.
As for longer opening in general, the economist Ann Pettifor notes that increased debt and debt payments means lower profits and so “These pressures to increase income at exponential rates for the repayment of debt implies that both labour and the land (defined broadly) have to be exploited at ever-rising rates. Those who labour by hand or brain work harder and longer to repay rising, real levels of mortgage or credit card debt. It is no accident therefore that the deregulation of finance led to the deregulation of working hours, and the abolition of Sunday as a day of rest. Instead, longer hours of work – ‘24/7’ – with shops open 24 hours a day for 7 days a week – became an acceptable practice as the finance sector’s values took precedence over other considerations.”
