It’s still a month until the longest day of the year, but the days are already quite long — currently about 17 hours. I took these tonight, the first at 10:30 pm, and the second at 10:50 pm, and you can see the sky is still somewhat blue, even an hour from midnight.
It sounds great (and it is — don’t get me wrong, especially after a long, dark winter), but there are disadvantages.
First, the birds here are…well…extremely loud and active, and they start up a least an hour before the sky starts to lighten up. Right now that happens at 3:50 am, so the birds start singing at 3:00 am. Friends of mine that have pets say this causes their animals to stay up basically all night. The pets therefore keep them awake, so they’re perpetually tired. (Then the pets just sleep all day while they’re at work, so that causes some domestic strife.)
For me it’s mostly just that it’s so easy to stay out until 12:00 am or 1:00 am and convince myself that it’s only 8:00 or 9:00 pm. Then I get home, watch some TV and unwind, and am shocked to discover that it’s 4:00 am — and the birds are anxiously preparing for a new day. So I’m perpetually tired too.
We still have a month before summer solstice — a time when the sky never really gets dark and dusk and dawn are about two hours apart. That’s fun, because there are bonfires on the canals and beaches, and everyone stays out all night (which, technically only takes two hours, but in practice involves much, much more time than that.)
During this time, I may be perpetually tired, but I can’t complain. After all, six months after that I’ll be arriving at work in the dark, and leaving work in the dark.
I understand the long days and nights are a difficult thing to deal with. I was traveling in the Yucatan after high school and met a couple of Norwegian girls who would save all year so they could have two weeks on the beach in the middle of winter.