Different Traditions : Europeans’ Clocks Are Out of Sync

ATHENS —  British astronomers set it. Swiss clockmakers keep it. German businessmen swear by it, but Irish poets ignore it, and Latin lovers cheat it. Here in Greece, politicians debate it.

It’s all a question of time.

And amid the ticking of disparate national clocks, Europe is increasingly aware these days that it is out of sync with itself.

Between countries, and within them, different concepts and uses of time are complicating a continental goal of democratic unity. By 1992, the 12 partners of the European Communities aim to abolish frontiers, allowing the free movement of goods and people. There are many obstacles: one of them, from the Athenian Parthenon to the Roman Pantheon, is that time weighs.

Is It Worth It?

Here in Greece the question is whether it is worth surrendering national traditions to the demands of a modern Europe. The Greek government, which holds the revolving Communities presidency for the rest of this year, thinks it is. Many Greeks are less sanguine.

Other Mediterranean peoples also wonder how much efficiency is worth. Are more methodical and richer Northern Europeans better off than those in the sunny south who have less money and more elastic life styles?

Last February, partly to mesh better with Greece’s Communities partners, the government of Socialist Prime Minister Andreas Papandreou defied a Greek custom even older than the Acropolis. It banned that afternoon hiatus known as the siesta, which has characterized--some would say exemplified--Mediterranean life since time immemorial.

Papandreou had impeccable cause for warring with tradition. Athens traffic is impossible. Downtown pollution is appalling. The siesta, usually from 2 p.m. to 5 p.m., created two extra rush hours each day and immeasurably increased pollution. It also, critically, shut down hundreds of Greek offices during business hours in much of the rest of West Europe.

‘Horse-and-Buggy Fashion’

“We can’t go on, horse-and-buggy fashion, with a split work day,” siesta-banning Labor Minister Giorgios Gennimatas said. “Stores in Greece stay open less than 50 hours a week, and up to 80 hours a week elsewhere in Europe.”

A single new all-day timetable replaced more than 40 different sets of hours for shops and businesses. Within months, the government exulted, the single schedule had reduced pollution and created thousands of new jobs in stores. New restaurants, called fasfoudadika , sprang up to quickly feed downtown thousands more accustomed to the heaviest meal of the day at home, followed by a snooze and then a second joust with the world of commerce lasting till 8 or 9 p.m.

Businessmen, shopkeepers, restaurant and movie theater owners, however, reject the government’s rosy view of the new system’s benefits. Their opposition is fierce.

“I’ve had to hire more help because nobody is allowed to work more than 40 hours a week, but business is down by more than 20%. People aren’t coming in during the afternoon and they’re not staying in town in the evenings anymore,” said Anastasia Carras, who runs a sportswear store off downtown Constitution Square.

Lovers, too, are aghast, for another casualty of change has been the afternoon love affair. Married businessmen and civil servants would retire to love nests during siesta hours and then escort their mistresses to a late-afternoon movie. By now, most theaters have scrapped their matinees, although there are not yet any reliable reports of a discarded-mistress glut.

Variety of Cultural Mores

Greece is just one example of the time differences that frazzle Europeans in a region that is not wide East to West--only two time zones--but is vast in its variety of cultural mores.

Doing transnational business in Europe today is clock work. So different are national timetables that there are only a few morning hours in which Europeans find one another at work.

The Scandinavians, Swiss and Germans rise early and work early--by 8 a.m. Some hard-charging Swiss and French entrepreneurs have even adapted the American power breakfast to croissants and cafe au lait . British businessmen, by contrast, try to avoid speaking on the phone before 10:30.

In Mediterranean countries, modern executives and government ministers are theoretically at work early, but shops and small businesses open desultorily, around 9:30 or 10.

The Italian government works from 8 a.m. to 2 p.m. six days a week, but in Northern Europe the two-day weekend is sacrosanct: Nobody works Saturday mornings. Some work Saturdays in westernized Turkey, where, alone in the Muslim world, Friday is a normal work day and Sunday is for rest.

Different Times for Lunch

By 11 a.m., Scandinavians are going to lunch and the British are having mid-morning coffee, while the Germans and Swiss are preparing to break at noon. Greeks and Italians, however, tend to leave for lunch between 1 and 2.

Spaniards don’t sit down for lunch much before 3, but Norwegians may have dinner as early at 5 p.m.

One night last month a restaurant in Vienna was closing when a nonplussed group of Italians arrived at what, for them, was a reasonable dinner hour: 9:30 p.m. In Spain, that is still sherry time.

In Northern Europe, punctuality is a routine fact of life. In Mediterranean countries it is, like world peace and squaring the circle, one of those desirable long shots.

Even within countries, time means different things from region to region. Milanese, who are richer than the Swiss and work as hard as the Germans, break for a 12:30-2 p.m. lunch hour. In that First World Italian enclave, diligence and efficiency are so prized that many entrepreneurs say frankly that they prefer to deal with Northern Europeans than with southern Italians.

Slow Postal Service

Many Milanese businesses dispatch couriers to Switzerland to avoid using the Italian postal system, where time stands still. According to one recent survey, an old horse could walk a letter from Milan to Rome quicker than the Italian post office delivers it by air mail.

Suavely south of the serious Italian north, Florentines eat between 1 and 3. Further south in Rome, lunch starts at around 1 but seldom ends much before 4. In Naples and Sicily, people leave for lunch around 2, and many are never seen again that day.

Keeping time is not easy even within any given Italian city. In Rome, for example, many businesses are open Saturday afternoons but closed Monday mornings, except in the summer, when they also close at lunchtime Saturday. For reasons that are lost to history, all Roman food shops are closed Thursday afternoons. Midday closings till 4 p.m. are a historic Italian tradition, but as northern traits seep south, some shops in Florence and Rome now remain open continuously. They generally brag about it with a sign in the window that says, in English, “Non Stop.”

The clocks of modern Europe never stop these days, but time still comes to life on the continent as diversely as it ever did. Everywhere, pressures for change and conformity are strong, but traditions die hard.

Four and a half months after proclaiming the success of the siesta ban, the Greek government scrapped it, at least for the summer. It’s simply too hot to work, Greece’s Socialists concede, under a midday sun tolerable, perhaps, only to mad dogs and Englishmen.