nooo, it was helpful to know your bank holidays, I wasn´t sure about them.

Even when there is a "bridge," this only concerns people who can manage to take an extra day off -- everything is open for business as usual.

I think that a lot of Americans get confused about the "bridges" because of Thanksgiving weekend when Friday seems to be almost as much of a holiday as Thursday -- unless you go shopping.

Mike I am envious, I love Romanesque architecture, one of he reasons I live where I do.

"Bridges" in Europe are very useful for workers that are subject to a maximum number of working hours per year. For example, the "provincial metal sector collective union agreement"(I ignore the equivalent in the US and the tranlation) says that for 2009 there´s a maximum working time of 1712 hours (it may differ from province to province). So at the end of the year worker´s representatives and management get together in each company to decide the days off, holidays and extra hours, if needed. From there we get a "working calendar", where "bridges" play an important role.

In Spain many companies will close for Xmas holidays from Dec 23 to Jan 7 to adjust their maximum working time to the calendar. Others work just 38 hours or 36 a week and have less days off the rest of the year. On Friday almost every industry worker ends at 1400 (lunch time) all year round and gets a free afternoon.

Once again, talk about productivity...