Yes – there are differences in how we tell the time in Germany in comparison to how you do it here in Britain. And one difference in particular is quite a crucial one and very good to know if you’re looking at visiting or living in Germany. It’s an interesting thing, really, that different places have different ways of letting someone know what time of day it is – and Germans, ever the precise ones, can really go down a rabbit hole, if they want to. Which we do. We do want to. And it’s something that drives my partner mad.

The general structure

Right, but let’s start at the beginning. One of the biggest differences is that we use the 24-hour clock, whereas here in the UK, it’s the 12-hour system. At first, this was an incredibly difficult thing for me to get used to when moving here – and, to be quite frank – I decided to not converge. Why? Because I think saying PM or AM is silly. So I keep saying it “my way”, unless, well, I know it would cause issues with whomever I am talking to. But when taking to my friends or partner, it’s the 24-hour one.

This means that after 12 – uh… it’s PM, the first one, right? Not midnight. Another silly thing, shouldn’t it only start at 1? Well, regardless – my point is that after 12 PM, we keep counting aaaall the way up to, eventually, 24. Which would be midnight. So instead of saying “let’s meet at 3 PM”, we would say “let’s meet at 15:00.”

The funny thing with the fractions

Now here’s where the real fun begins. Because guess what, we do tell the time differently in the old and the new states in Germany. Everything that’s been Eastern Germany and Western Germany – and it’s still the case, even after over 30 years – have their own custom. Here they are:

So here’s the problem. If you’re in Western Germany, the only thing you have to worry about is that we switch to the next hour when it’s ’30, not maintaining the previous one, like you do. “Half nine” means 9:30 in the UK; “Half nine” means 8:30 in Germany.

But if you go to Eastern Germany, you’re in for a ride. To be fair, they are the only ones really being uniform here, with all of the things responding the the next full hour, instead of doing a weird half/half thing. But that doesn’t stop me from saying how odd it is.

How precise can we go?

We do have more milestones than this, though. After all, we want others to be on time, don’t we. Which means there is an announcement for every five minutes that pass.

• 09:05? That’s five past nine.
• 09:10? Ten past nine, of course.
• 09:20? This is where it gets interesting. Both “twenty past nine” as well as “ten to half ten” is accurate.
• 09:25? Five to half ten. Yep.
• 09:35? Five past half ten!
• 09:40? Again, both “twenty to ten” and “ten past half ten” work perfectly fine.
• 09:50? Ten to ten!
• 09:55? Five to ten, of course.

We can be flexible, too. If we know the other one is hinting at a specific time, such as our favourite TV program starting at 20:15 (that’s 8:15 PM for you all), but it’s currently 20:12, we can indeed say it’s three minutes to quarter past eight. Interestingly, if we say it like this, we also revert to the 12-hour system!

Now this is what really makes my partner angry. Because we don’t stop there. Because if someone wants to know the time, we really let them know the time. No “close enough”, no, down to the minute.

4:28 PM? Well, it’s Sechzehn Uhr Achtundzwanzig, of course. 16 o’clock 28.

[Picture by Vije Vijendranath – thank you!]