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
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