Bells

Tizan says Germany is obsessed with bells. Church bells seem to be ringing all the time. They are telling the time: 1 chime for quarter past, two chimes for half past, 3 chimes for quarter to, 4 chimes for the full hour and then another bell tolling as many times as the o'clock, so when it's 8 o'clock there are 4 of the one bell and then 8 of the other.

Sometimes there are more bells, e.g. to call people to mess (they seem to have a lot of mess here!). They also ring the bells lots at 11am and at 12pm. You have to know that in Germany they have their main (hot) meal at lunchtime so the 11am bell used to tell the farmers' wives to go home from the fields and cook lunch, and the 12pm bell called the farmers home for lunch.

We even saw a fire station with a bell on top instead of a siren! We have a little video from the church in Effeltrich from from last Friday at 12pm but we need to figure out how we can insert it here.