The Berlin Perspective: Time Change? What Time Change?

Europe and other parts of the world are in for another grandiose time change. The E.U. is constantly talking about scrapping the whole daylight saving time thing for good. But, guess what: Brussels needs more ‘time’. Hallelujah.

Berlin, March 8th, 2020. Update: March 14th, 2022 (The Berlin Spectator) — We are humans living in the 21st century. We work like crazy. We have appointments, business meetings and Corona. What do we look at all the time? The clock, the watch or the smart phone. We do so for one reason: It’s all about time. We depend on it, we build our miserable lives around it. And there is one question we always need answered: What in the hell is the time?

Asynchronous Time Change

We just need to know, because it tells us when to eat, when to sleep, even when to go to the bathroom. It tells us when we need to enter data into clouds, write our next useless Powerpoint presentation, feed the baby, walk the car, give our dog an oil change, take the kids to the private math teacher and when to take a nap in order to forget about time for some ‘time’.

There is one single thing on Earth which makes us nervous: It’s when we do not know the answer to the big question, thanks to the daylight saving time and the mess it creates. Nobody ever understands which way to turn the damned clock. Is it forward or backward? Will we sleep less or more when daylight saving time is being dumped, or when it comes back?

It gets worse: Our family members, friends or business partners in a country called United States of America do not switch times back and forth on the same day we, the weird Europeans, do. This means we might call them at 6:00 a.m. in the morning, before breakfast, while they are polishing their dentures. Or, even worse, they might call us late at night, while we are just about to switch off ‘Bridge of Spies’, after the Supreme Court scene, to finally fall asleep.

2 Equals 3

So, Europe is getting ready to throw those constant time changes overboard. But it will take some ‘time’, since there are complications, as always. The individual countries decide whether they will constantly live in summer or winter time. This means if there is no consensus within the E.U., the mess might be even bigger than it already is, once time changes will be scrapped. In theory, it might be 2 p.m. in Denmark, 3 p.m. in Germany, 2 p.m. in Czechia and 3 p.m. in Slovakia. To hell with that.

In case you missed it: The next time change to summer time or daylight saving time will take place on March 27th, 2022. At 2:00 a.m., the time will be set forward by an hour. Yes, 2 plus 1 still equaled 3 last time we checked. At one point, 2 will equal 3. This applies to the European Union, which by the way had three time zones when Great Britain was still part of this project. Bulgaria and Romania are always one hour ahead. The Brits were an hour behind, and still are.

So, let’s look at some more facts (yawn):

What do the Americans have to do on March 27th, 2022?

Nothing. They can just eat their hotcakes for breakfast and go back to bed. That is because most of them already switched to daylight saving time yesterday morning, on March 13th, 2022, at 2:00 a.m..

What should residents in Hawaii and Arizona do?

Go surfing and look after their cattle. They don’t have to turn clocks like the rest of us, because they chose not to take part in this whole mess. The only exception is Navajo Nation, located in Arizona.

What do Europeans do on March 27th?

We should just sleep. The fact of the matter is that our cell phones and computers will change to summer time automatically, unless you have a 20-year-old PC with Windows 3.1 that freezes whenever you need it most. It’s only that ugly and dusty Ikea kitchen clock which has to be set accordingly. But this can wait until later on Sunday morning. Take our word for it.

What do Latin Americans, Asians, Africans and Australians do?

The Australians have a complicated scheme in some provinces. We won’t even get into it. Asian countries don’t take part, which is the smart way. The same applies to African countries. In Latin America, many countries do not have time switches either. In countries like Brazil or Mexico, some states or provinces do, while others do not, meaning they have their own mess to deal with.

When does the daylight saving time a.k.a. summer time end?

On Sunday, October 30th, 2022 at 3:00 a.m.. In the United States it will be ‘time’ to end the daylight saving time on November 6th.

Why in the hell do we have daylight saving time in the first place?

In order to save daylight time. We tried to save both daylight and time in bags. It did not work.

Why is there never enough time?

How in the hell would we know? Have a good ‘time’ adjusting the time.

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European UnionTime