The sound of Bern’s church bells all night long isn’t music to the ears of City Council member Marcel Wüthrich, who is pushing a bill to turn them off between 10 pm and 7 am in the interests of better sleep.
Wüthrich points to a study by ETH, the Swiss Federal Technology Institute, that found that bells chiming every 15 minutes can seriously disrupt sleeping patterns. On his Facebook page, he made clear he’s not against churches, just for better sleep.
He told local media “People’s right to peace and quiet is worth more than tradition. The chiming of bells isn’t a tradition but serves only to indicate the time. Today, no one is dependent on that.”
It’s not the only recent War of the Bells for Switzerland. A long-time Swiss resident from the Netherlands was recently denied Swiss citizenship when her rural neighbors objected to her frequent complaints about noise from church and cow bells.
And in another part of Switzerland, a farmer lost a drawn-out appeal of a judgement obtained by neighbors, and has been ordered to take the bells off his cows from 10 pm to 7 am.
Photo: msocialmedia/Wikimedia
I think the proposal is not unreasonable, but the bells are among my favorite sounds in Europe. I love going to sleep with them chiming and waking up to their chiming.
I have a church next door to me. And another church 300 feet away. It says in my Radio Operators Handbook that I’m safe from Lightning Strikes. An umbrella of safety. What a load of rubbish ! Took a metre square of tiles off when it struck !
However – I would be grateful if the two church’s would chime at the same time.
So we have Catholic time and Anglican time. You can only hear the bells when you’re outside .
Paul – That reminds me of the Belgian clock that kept perfect time for 100 years. A reporter from London went to South Africa to investigate the story. He went to the Clockmakers shop in Pretoria. And in the centre of the window stood the famous clock that kept perfect time. He interviewed the owner of the shop and made notes of the clocks history , ready for his article in The Times back in London. The reporter asked how the time of the famous Belgian Clock was checked for accuracy. “We check it daily with the One-O-Clock Gun that’s fired from the Garrison”. So the reporter went to the Army Garrison to see the One-O-Clock Gun, mounted up high overlooking Pretoria. He noted all the famous history of the cannon used to sound 1 o’clock to the towns people. “And how do you know when its exactly the right time to fire the gun?” And the Army Colonel replied ” We use a telescope to see the time on the famous Belgian Clock”
I think its embedded in their religious freedom to be both WRONG ! I wouldn’t set my Calendar by either of them.
My mother’s uncle was a jeweler and had a large collection of chiming clocks in his apartment. When we visited as children, we often wondered why Uncle Max’s clocks all went off at different times, so that there were times when it seemed like a full 15 minutes of so of chimes.
Fifty or so years later, I figured it out: He wanted each of them to have its own moment to play its distinctive chimes. Perhaps that’s why your two churches are not in sync?
And speaking of not in sync: For 400 years, almost up to 1800, Basel, Switzerland kept its clocks an hour later than the area around it. Supposedly from a time in the 14th century when guards at the gate held off a midnight attack by holding the bells for an hour, giving the defenders time to gather.
So Garry — who’s got the correct time? The Catholics or Anglicans?