
I'm a simple emigrant, and in Germany today they changed the time
Every year in Germany the clocks are moved to daylight saving time in March and back to standard time in October. And I somehow never asked myself why they even do this. Turns out, they seriously adjust the clock hands to follow the sun in order to save electricity. The logic is simple: we adapt our lives to the daylight—use less light—everyone is happy. And for over a hundred years Europe has been fiddling with this time change. First they introduced it, then they cancelled it, then reintroduced it and cancelled it again, saying that the change reminded too much of wartime. Then they reintroduced it again, and now they’re trying to abolish it, and in 2021 they even passed a decision to abolish it. But because of COVID the changes were postponed; I don’t know what COVID has to do with it. Mostly the change is being scrapped because in the modern world we no longer burn coal for heat, and moreover, the “saved” evening light in the summer we spend in the morning, and anyway lighting is no longer the main expense of electricity. They also say that the time change affects our health; I don’t know if that’s true. In any case, I would prefer to always live on daylight saving time and not make my life more complicated.