Our Own Time Zone

One of the possessions we appreciatively inherited from the Stoltes as they moved out of Dresden while we moved in was a nice looking, wall hanging clock. It doesn’t look super fancy or anything, just like a regular, round, kitchen clock, and that’s precisely where we hung it.

The amazing thing about this clock though, is that it’s “radio controlled.” Do you know what that means? Once an AA battery is popped in the back it promptly sets itself to the exact official time it receives by some signal. The precise technicalities are foggy to me, but it keeps good time like any clock should and that’s enough info for me (and it doesn’t need to be set, woohoo!).

This technological wonder has hung contentedly in our kitchen since we got our landlord to hammer a nail into one of the walls (he insists he do it) a few months after we moved in. It was the main clock I relied on to accurately relay how fast I’d have to walk through the Waldpark to the tram to be on time for the German class I took, not to mention the countless times throughout the day when a quick glimpse reminded me about some prearranged appointment. I owe much of the orderliness and success of my daily life to this clock.

Now as of about three weeks ago our clock took on a mind of its own. One day I briefly glanced up and had to gasp at the complete nonsense in front of me. Our clock was four hours slow! (ok, ok or eight hours fast, take your pick.)

It wasn’t that it had simply stopped running because it needed a new Energizer. No, the clock was still ticking away, maintaining the absolute correct “minute.” Hmm.

Amy and I went to work trying to think of what had come over our staple of reliability and decided maybe the clock was just confused. After all, the battery couldn’t be dead, it was still running-! Plus, our other radio controlled clock (a digital one on the shelf in the bathroom) was still reading the right time so it couldn’t have been some kind of mass signal error.

After prying out the battery and then sliding it back into place, the hands spun around and finally rested on the right time. We breathed a sigh of relief.

However, the next day at a little after four o’clock as we were sitting at the kitchen table the stinkin thing just took off spinning and reset itself four hours behind the correct time. What is going on here!

I write this after a few weeks of this occurrence and must add that no matter what time we pull the battery out and put it back in and the right time appears, a little after four in the afternoon the time becomes a couple minutes past noon. Every day! Unless the time is already four hours behind because we hadn’t done the battery trick. Then it somehow stays the four hours behind it already was.

So as if we weren’t having enough trouble trying to figure out time differences as to not wake our parents/friends up by calling in the middle of the night, etc, now we have to think about the actual time zone of our kitchen as compared to the rest of Germany too. And it’s not even wrong by a convenient seven or eight hours behind (Amy’s and my home time zone differences, respectively), so it’s just really useless. We can’t even think of a place in the world with this exact time…somewhere in China maybe?

I forgot to mention earlier that the kicker (or should I say “ticker” since we’re talking about clocks?) to this whole thing is that in fine print under the “6” on the face of the clock it reads, “German Technology.” So maybe that’s it, we can’t figure it out because we’re not German. Man, it’s this cool invention...well it would be, if it would work!

I can’t help but wonder if the battery really is just on it’s last leg and needs to be replaced, but why won’t the clock just admit defeat? Why the four hours behind routine? Does it use less energy that way?

So if I call any of you inconveniently early or am an hour or two late for my next lunch meeting…sorry but I’m gonna have to blame it on that German technology, radio-controlled clock.