Shop opening hours are customarily Mon-Fri 9am-noon & 2-6.30pm, Sat 8.30am-noon, although it's becoming more common in the cities to ignore the lunch break and stay open on Saturday until 4pm; the flipside is that many places take Monday morning off. Most shops now have one day of late-opening, often Thursday until 9pm; those in the subterranean malls at train stations are open daily, and close later. Most big-city stations also have 24-hour vending machines dispensing loaves of bread, cheese and cartons of milk. Museums and attractions are often open on Sundays, but virtually all are closed on Mondays.

Almost everything is closed on the following public holidays : Jan 1; Good Friday & Easter Monday (March 29 & 31); Ascension Day (May 9); Whit Monday (May 18); Dec 25 & 26. In Switzerland, shops and banks tend to close for all or part of Swiss National Day (Aug 1) and on a range of local holidays as well. As well as the above, Liechtenstein keeps May 1 as a public holiday, and Aug 15 as the national holiday.