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Comment by stoolpigeon | Hacker News Reader

One of the strangest feelings I've had is flying from Amsterdam to Johannesburg. It's a super long trip and so mentally I was expecting jet lag. But there was no time change. The season flipped but the time of day was right in sync with everyone back home in Budapest.

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That's exactly why it's one of my favorite destinations. Take off in European winter in the evening, land in summer in the morning, no jet lag, beautiful landscapes, it's awesome.

That's also exactly same when I fly from Seoul to Sydney. 1 or 2 hours differences depending on daylight saving but it's actually nothing.

I traveled from San Francisco to Johannesburg. It was two flights, one to Berlin and then on to Johannesburg.

The first flight gave us the usual jet lag going to Europe. The problem was our flight from Berlin to Johannesburg left in Berlin’s evening. It’s an 11 hour flight so the idea is that you sleep on the plane and arrive in the morning after 8 hours of sleep.

But that only works if your body is already in GMT+1!

So while everyone else slept the whole way, we were wide awake! I took pictures of the navigation display the moment we crossed the equator.

But man was I messed up when I arrived. 11 hours on a plane and no time change is just so strange.

The two times I've been to SA it was for conferences and normally they had been held in Asia. It was a completely different experience going into them without some pretty heavy jet lag. Everything was better. And I could see how it impacted the people who had come from farther east or west. It was super interesting to see it play out. I don't know where we would have met this year - the pandemic took care of that.

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