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Travel Tuesday: Daylight Saving/Summer Time in the Czech Republic

Posted on 15 November 2016 by Kate Challis
It has been a little over a week since daylight saving time has ended in the US (except for weirdos AZ and HI).

I have to write about one of the strangest observations I had while in the Czech Republic: the time on the clock absolutely did not correspond to my feeling of what time it should be based on the position of the sun. Like, at all.

From Prague to Paris is a straight 9 hr. drive.

From Seattle to Missoula is a semi straight 7 hr drive. These are cities on the same latitude as Paris and Prague, important when determining time zones.

Basically, even from the most generous point of view, the “Central European Time Zone” is much larger than the time zones to which Americans are accustomed. And usually most Americans never discover this, because the main European tourist attractions tend to be in Paris, on the western end of the time zone. Many tourists do go to Prague, but I think tourism there generally involves a fairly high alcohol consumption, which affects the way one wakes up in a wholly different way.


But it did affect me, the sun rising at 4 am. Especially when traveling for 12+ hrs in airports, walking around Prague for 3 hrs, a 3 hr bus ride, and trying to sleep in a hotel on a Saturday night where a very loud, obnoxious wedding was taking place. I finally fell asleep only to have the sun cruelly laugh at me three hours later, and I am sure I never actually recovered from that stress + lack of sleep the whole time. I would have been like a crazy person anyway, because everything was so interesting.

The courtyard below this window was the site of a really loud wedding party.

But wow, the time zones are weird, for Ostrava, on the eastern side, especially. I’m used to the sun rising between 6-7 am. It’s so nice to be back to normal. The only sad thing is that now it’s always dark when Danny comes home at 5:30.

All in all, it’s very nice to have everything switched back, even though time changes and children are completely incompatible. My sons still wake up at 5 am to watch Netflix or play minecraft, even though it’s pitch black outside. And of course this wakes up the baby…parenthood and sleep just don’t mix.

But who could ever be grumpy when you wake up to a view like this?

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