![time zones in australia time zones in australia](http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-XmInbvrDzoI/UURi48dSjnI/AAAAAAAAA6w/SbkRr4YETEU/s1600/Australia+timezones+Summer.jpg)
The Kaliningrad Oblast exclave is now an hour ahead of Lithuania to its east, and two hours ahead of neighboring Poland. And that small section of far northern Norway that borders Russia? Crossing that border into Russia gains you three hours at once! On the flip side, traveling east from Vladivostok to Japan, or south to North Korea, loses you two hours, and traveling into China gains you three hours there as well! Moving from Eastern Europe or Turkey into Russia and the Caucasus also gains you two hours.
![time zones in australia time zones in australia](https://cdn-images-1.medium.com/max/1600/1*QkKIsh7h0SgVLjDNLyd2GQ.png)
This also creates an unusual situation in the Kaliningrad Oblast exclave, which is now an hour ahead of Lithuania to its east, and two hours ahead of neighboring Poland.
![time zones in australia time zones in australia](https://daylight-savings.com/img/australia4.png)
All together, there are now three different areas where you gain two hours crossing time zones instead of just one. Adding to the deviance, in 2010, the Medvedev government abolished two entire time zones in an attempt to make the country easier to manage. The former Soviet republics of the Caucasus and Central Asia follow this lead, as does Mongolia. As a result, the clocks are always well ahead of the sun, sometimes more than two hours in places. The biggest time deviant may be Russia, which has been on permanent daylight saving time since the Soviet Union introduced it in 1930. Speaking of Australia, the Northern Territory and South Australia choose to offset at UTC +9.5 instead of their proper UTC +9, which means travelers from Western Australia to the Northern Territory gain 90 minutes instead of an hour.
![time zones in australia time zones in australia](https://ontheworldmap.com/australia/australian-time-zone-map-max.jpg)
On the flip side, there’s one border where traveling north or south puts you ahead or behind just 15 minutes. That would be the border between India (UTC +5.5) and Nepal (UTC +5.75). Both countries straddle the +5/+6 line, so it actually make perfect sense. Nepal is centered just a slight bit to the east, resulting in that extra 15 minutes. The only other time zones with a deviance on three quarters of an hour are New Zealand’s Chatham Islands, and the tiny Central Western Time Zone of Western Australia. Welcome to the world of standard time, where the only international rule is keeping your clocks in sync with UTC (aka Greenwich Mean Time). Why have the sun be directly overhead at 11:40 when it can be directly overhead at 12:10 instead? You’ll get sunlight a half-hour later in your day and still be more accurate, chronologically, with regard to the sun. You may notice, however, that the French collectivity of Saint-Pierre and Miquelon just to the south of Newfoundland is a half-hour ahead despite being at exactly the same longitude. By traveling west on the ferry from Newfoundland, you actually travel forward in time a half-hour. How do you move ahead in time traveling west, not east (besides the IDL, of course)? Sandford Fleming must be turning in his grave! (“That’s 10:00 tonight on The National, 10:30 in Newfoundland.”) Nowhere else in all of North America does a jurisdiction deviate from Coordinated Universal Time (UTC) on the half-hour. But if you look at the map above, you’ll see why Newfoundland chose that half-hour deviation, as it sits right on the edge of UTC -4 (aka Atlantic Standard Time), almost jutting into UTC -3. In Canada, the island of Newfoundland has a reputation for being quirky and unique. One of those quirky, unique things that sets it apart is its time zone, which deviates from the regular standard time zone scheme by a half-hour.