The Off Topic Topic

[The Brain]

What's with the quarter hour ringing? Doesn't it defeat the purpose of time keeping if it's just going off every 15 minutes?

How do you mean?

[Sheilbh]

What's with the quarter hour ringing? Doesn't it defeat the purpose of time keeping if it's just going off every 15 minutes?

Usual system is to use the smaller bells to mark the quarter hours and the strokes of the big bell to mark the hours.

....and the complaining tourists need to fuck off. Its the same with the countryside here in England, a certain type of urbanite will complain about roosters, cows lowing etc etc....utterly ridiculous.

Hell it's the same in urban England. Tourists or people with lots of money residing in, say, Dalston or Soho who make noise complaints about the nightlife industry that was there before they arfived

[Syt]

What's with the quarter hour ringing? Doesn't it defeat the purpose of time keeping if it's just going off every 15 minutes?

In my town the church rang out the quarters with a smaller, higher pitched bell (1 strike for 15, 2 for 30, 3 for 45). At the full hour the smaller bell would chime 4 times, and the bigger one the number of hours.

[Eddie Teach]

While tourists shouldn't dictate these things, I'd hate them as a local.

[Threviel]

We rent out a house and had some tenants a decade or so ago that decided to move into an apartment in the town. Above a bar. With a baby. What we heard later is that they did their absolute best to abolish night life and I think they succeeded with getting some lower sound level limits. Fucking idiots.

They ended up asking to be let back, but no thank you. When they lived here they had, amongst other things, a habit of throwing rocks after speeding cars. I guess we were lucky to get rid of them.

It is a special kind of idiot that goes somewhere and demands that that place should change to their benefit.

[HVC]

What's with the quarter hour ringing? Doesn't it defeat the purpose of time keeping if it's just going off every 15 minutes?

In my town the church rang out the quarters with a smaller, higher pitched bell (1 strike for 15, 2 for 30, 3 for 45). At the full hour the smaller bell would chime 4 times, and the bigger one the number of hours.

interesting. i don't think that happens here. just the hours are marked. Like Eddie i think the tourists are idiots, but id really hate being a local too. Although, i guess if i can get used to living near a fire station i could get used to church bells

[Tamas]

I have seen a recent discussion under a Hungarian article regarding church noises.

It seemed like a big issue was the proliferation of automatic bell-ringers which prompted a lot of churches to start blasting away every 15 minutes, which seems to have a limited set of approvals even from natives of the given towns and villages.

So while I also disapprove of newcomers coming in and wanting to forcefully rearrange a place to their personal liking (and it's just retarded from tourists), needless noise-making in a community is pretty much exactly as bad as that. These noises should be tolerated to a degree, but they should not be getting blanket acceptance just because it is a "local tradition" e.g. the church getting a new nifty machine and the priest power-tripping by chiming away every 15 minutes instead of hourly.

[Threviel]

Everything has its time and traditions has to start somewhere. Perhaps Spain should stop with the quarterly thing and Hungary start with it, but I think it's for the locals to decide. And having grown up in a touristy place I can comfortably say that tourists can fuck off.

[Tamas]

Everything has its time and traditions has to start somewhere. Perhaps Spain should stop with the quarterly thing and Hungary start with it, but I think it's for the locals to decide. And having grown up in a touristy place I can comfortably say that tourists can fuck off.

Church-specific, the complaints I read from some natives was the sheer volume at which they are now exposed to quarter-hourly bing-bangs. It sounds might annoying.

But there's no argument, it's not for tourists or freshly arrived people to start forcefully shutting down things at their new place.

[Malthus]

Everything has its time and traditions has to start somewhere. Perhaps Spain should stop with the quarterly thing and Hungary start with it, but I think it's for the locals to decide. And having grown up in a touristy place I can comfortably say that tourists can fuck off.

Church-specific, the complaints I read from some natives was the sheer volume at which they are now exposed to quarter-hourly bing-bangs. It sounds might annoying.

But there's no argument, it's not for tourists or freshly arrived people to start forcefully shutting down things at their new place.

I rather suspect the pressure doesn't come from tourists directly, but from the local owners of hotels that cater to them.

Tourists are very unlikely to complain to the church authorities (how would they even know who to complain to?). Instead, it is more likely local hotel owners will find themselves losing business, as tourists all communicate by word of mouth and social media - don't stay at X hotel because it it is too close to the church bells that ring all hours, stay at Y hotel instead, it is far enough away not to be too disturbing.

Hotel owners have the local contacts and clout to put pressure on church authorities - I'm losing business, change your bell-ringing ways or I won't donate to the church roof repair fund, that sort of thing.

It isn't really a "screw the tourists" issue, so much as a "screw the local businesses" one. The tourists may even like the bells, which add to the picturesque atmosphere of the place. Just not patronize the hotels right next to them.

...

Anecdotally, the worst annoyance of this sort as a tourist I ever experienced was in Indonesia, from the Muslim call to prayer. The problem was this: they were not actual in-person calls to prayer, but pre-recoded ones on some really worn out record ... what came out was a scratchy, inarticulate wailing that sounded sort of like "AaaaaaalaaaalasssAhhhg! (Crackle, snap) Aaaaaaaaa!". All in the early hours of the morning, and super loud.

Bells are kinda musical, and the call to prayer, when live, is likewise pleasing; the pre-recorded ones were not ...

[Sheilbh]

Anecdotally, the worst annoyance of this sort as a tourist I ever experienced was in Indonesia, from the Muslim call to prayer. The problem was this: they were not actual in-person calls to prayer, but pre-recoded ones on some really worn out record ... what came out was a scratchy, inarticulate wailing that sounded sort of like "AaaaaaalaaaalasssAhhhg! (Crackle, snap) Aaaaaaaaa!". All in the early hours of the morning, and super loud.

I have had the opposite experience in Morocco of some of the men doing the call to prayer having really beautiful voices and it was great - I was accidentally there during Ramadan so a particularly important time. But a good voice is not, apparently, a key bit of the CV for doing the call to prayer so you had some Mosques where the biggest compliment you could give is that they were loud

Bells are kinda musical, and the call to prayer, when live, is likewise pleasing; the pre-recorded ones were not ...

Yes - although again I've been to Bosnia a few times and it is raucous during call to prayer times because it feels like the calls to prayer start and then the various churches with bells basically want to compete so they all start ringing too to drown out the Mosques etc.

[Savonarola]

I signed up for alerts form Career Bliss when I was unemployed about a decade ago.  I still get a weekly "New Opportunity" type e-mail from them.  My top two matches this week:

Senior High Frequency Futures Quantitative Trader
Food Service Worker (Part-Time)

[The Brain]

I signed up for alerts form Career Bliss when I was unemployed about a decade ago.  I still get a weekly "New Opportunity" type e-mail from them.  My top two matches this week:

Senior High Frequency Futures Quantitative Trader
Food Service Worker (Part-Time)

[Duque de Bragança]

I've got so much respect and envy for the Bristol University pediatrics professor who is on the JCVI. Everytime there's an announcement about the vaccine program he pops up on the BBC to discuss it from his holiday home in Haute Savoie where, as far as I can see, he's been all year

I'd settle for permission to have a home home in haute savoie.

You'd move to somewhere French speaking?  It is a gorgeous place, mind you, if you like mountains.

Likely have little choice in that. At least in haute savoie you've cheap houses and fewer people. :p

I wouldn't be so sure about cheap housing, I was told that lots of people there work in Switzerland, so the area has a relatively high cost of living for France.

Above average prices, for France that is. Cheaper than Paris or the Côte d'Azur though.  Summer can be pricier as well.

[Duque de Bragança]

What's with the quarter hour ringing? Doesn't it defeat the purpose of time keeping if it's just going off every 15 minutes?

Usual system is to use the smaller bells to mark the quarter hours and the strokes of the big bell to mark the hours.

....and the complaining tourists need to fuck off. Its the same with the countryside here in England, a certain type of urbanite will complain about roosters, cows lowing etc etc....utterly ridiculous.

Neo-rurals are the same all over the place it seems.