Good afternoon ,

My first complaint in a yet an otherwise civilised country!

Church bells? Whats going on?

I moved to another temporary apartment last week and have continuously been woken up at 4 o'clock in the morning by church bells, it continues on every quarter and then at the top of the hour and then on to 6 , at which time i pass out from exhaustion! I'm not sure if it goes on all day, but the other day when i came in at 1 in the morning off it went then continuing to 2. Another time it woke me at 3. Hey maybe it just goes right through the night.

Is this normal? Please tell me it isn't ! Is it just another thing i have to concider when choosing a long term apartment? Isn't this the land of no noise after 10 in some flats ??? Whats going on ..............i bet the vicar lives somewhere else!!!

a very tired confused Cosmicgirl

Hi there, yes this is normal....1 chime quater past, 2 chimes half past, 3 chimes quater to, and 4 chimes on the hour plus what ever time it is....

good luck....you do get use to it honest...

I don't even hear them anymore. On Sundays though, they go bananas. What I do is whip out the vacuum cleaner and make the most of the din.

Honestly, you stop hearing it after a couple of weeks. Even if you do hear it you just roll over and go back to sleep in an instant.

So its not worth me sending my sister round to sort out the vicar? Honestly she was going to go round and question him!!! I said to her it probably best to wait until you get your permit!

O yep thanks i was woken up by those bananas on Sunday! and my hangover wouldn't have liked the sound of a vacum cleaner either, perhaps 'zee bells' are not so bad after all....looks like there is no escape O my god!

So many responses to that question. All of them would get me banned.

But yeah, not much you can do about it, so just learn to live with it. Though by the sounds of your hangover, you are already investigating one effective solution to the problem. Sounds like you just didn't drink enough.

That is normal here I am afraid and you do get used to it. I grew up in the country and all the noise there was were cow bells (yes, I am Swiss, how could you tell?). Now we do have church bells all night through and I never wake up because of them. Just take a deep breath and relax... you'll sleep in no time.

The mad noise on Sunday morning is the call for the church service - I guess a left over from when not everyone had a good watch.

Some people get used to the bells. I never did, and ended up finding a place to live that was far enough away from a church so that they didn't bother me. Moving might be your best bet. I went over two years lacking sleep before moving.

Just take a deep breath and relax...

Excuse me?

The mad noise on Sunday morning is the call for the church service -

Think they are going the wrong way about it We are all dog tired to pray ... hey maybe we should pray for no bells please we're british !

Depends on the permit as well. All permits do not come with the right to question vicars. EU B, EU L, Non-EU C, Non-EU L married to EU B, EU B living with Non-EU C ... Eyyyeeeuuuwwww!

Moving away would be the sensible solution for sensitive ears of course. But if she has moved in a week ago I think she could just try for a bit longer.

Personally, I prefer my church bells to the road noise I had in my last flat.

Some people don't get used to the noise and hate it more and more as time goes on...

I wish I was as rich as a Swiss bellmaker.

For more on bells:
Surprise at church bell noise

In few weeks you'll get used to it, in two months you won't even notice the sound. Well, maybe except 6am bells. In few years you'll start missing it during your vacation.

On a serious note - how far away is the church? I have one in 200 meters from my bedroom window, and it's doesn't disturb at all.

I have a gigantic cathedral just down the road from me and a smaller church up the road and they both chime every quarter of an hour, but sadly they aren't really synched up, so one chimes a few minutes earlier than the other.

But at least they're nowhere near as annoying as the pigeons that seem to roost in the eaves near my bedroom window and start cooing at about 5am every morning. Or the restaurant downstairs that makes a racket until midnight every night ...

... aah, I love it.

Cheers Nev..

I enjoyed reading that thread while drinking a few glasses of wine to help me sleep tonight....

Hopefully i'll make it through the night .......

But what if your neighbor complains about vacuuming on Sunday?!?!? I can't even take my wine bottles to the recycling on Sun without raising someones hackles...

-fduvall

There's always the 'i may be noisy, but at least I'm clean' perspective. I am surrounded by little old ladies who don't seem to mind. Their husband's have all been dispatched and they all have wireless networks (). When things go wrong, they call me. Also, I bake them cakes in return for looking after my cats.

We are actually quite lucky with all of our neighbors. On either side of us are a group of young guys, and our walls must be thick, because nothing gets through. I brought them cold beer while they were moving in, so friends for life!

fduvall

The wife and I once went to look at a house for sale in Monchaltorf. It was amazing, everything we wanted at a price we could afford. Just as we were about to ask for the form to take to the Notariat, the church next door fired up, shaking the walls / windows, knocking dust out of cracks in the ceiling, and drowning all conversation for the next five minutes.
"You get used to it..." insisted the seller; we were already out the door and backing down the drive!
Aparently the great majority of these bells are driven at the push of a button by an electric motor. Perhaps it should be made law that only bells pulled by campanologists are permitted. This would either result in a lot of enourmously muscled priests or a lot more quiet.

Jim