Madrid will be dead in August. The beaches in Spain will be full of tourists. The Balearic islands will be full of Italians.
I think this is a wildly misleading thread. :eek:
It is true that a few European countries like to head off on holiday en masse in August. I would suggest that these are France, Italy and Spain.
Having played chess tournaments in the UK, Holland, Germany, Belgium, Russia, Slovakia, Hungary, Denmark, Sweden, Norway, Finland and Croatia in August, I can assure you that all these countries cater for tourism and business at that time.
The streets may be less crowded, but they are certainly not ‘closed’.
If you’re planning on traveling within Germany, a German Rail Pass is something you might want to consider. My wife and I used one at Thanksgiving to travel from Munich to Nuremburg (round trip), Munich to Duesseldorf, and Duesseldorf to Berlin. The pass we got allowed two people 4 days of travel in first-class within a one-month period, and it cost approximately $500 (don’t quote me as being exact price). For comparison, I just checked the price of two first-class tickets from Munich to Duesseldorf, and it came out to a little bit more than 300 euro. Plane travel is great, depending on where you want to go. If you’re on a train, you might have a chance of seeing some scenery. Have fun on your trip!
I’ve gotta say that the best time I ever had in Paris was two weeks in August, several years ago. Nothing I wanted to see was closed, and it was far less crowded than usual. You could even cross *l’Etoile *without sacrificing life and limb.
Hey! Somebody knows what my screenname means. 
Actually, now that I think of it, things definitely slowed down in August, but I don’t recall anything near a city-wide shutdown. Everything was still working, just a little bit quieter. It wasn’t the sort of massive exodus it sounds like it is in Western Europe (or Russia, for that matter. Everybody was gone to their dacha when I was there in the summer).
In Norway at least, and I believe in the rest of the Nordic countries, it’s July that’s the big vacation month. Norwegians speak of “fellesferien”, the “common vacation”, which is either the middle two or the last three weeks in July, depending on who you ask. The country is still definitely open for tourism and for business, but the pace is slower. A bureaucratic detail that might take two days the rest of the year can stretch out for a week or two, you might call your doctor’s office and get nothing but a recording instructing you to call Dr. So-and-so across town whom you’ve never heard of, that sort of thing. The only annoyance tourists are likely to notice is that the banks are open shorter hours, as though their hours weren’t already short enough.
In August things return to normal; our schools start around August 20 so anyone with school-aged kids has got to come back home and get into the old groove again.
Yup, very open for tourism. Not so much for business. When planning a project that will last over summer you never plan for much progress in July and early August because anyone actually at work will be waiting for someone who’s on vacation to return and do his bit.
Shopping and tourism however is open for business.
I have been in Paris, Madrid , Lisbon and Krakow in August and haven’t noticed any closing down of these cities. All the tourist sites and restaurants are open, and there are plenty of tourists around.