When living in Stockholm, I came to appreciate the various levels of twilight and darkness, rather than thinking of day and night so strictly. The sun being low on the horizon also scatters light across the sky in ways that are very beautiful and last much longer than sunrise and sunset in Australia where I grew up.
Having grown up around the same latitude as Stockholm, one thing I never realized until last year when visiting tropics is how my subconscious associates warmth with long evenings. Being used to summers where you could basically read a book outside at 11PM, it felt really weird to be outside in tropic heat, but complete darkness by 6PM.
Catches me every time too. And it's so quick. You can go in to a shop to pick up a packet of crisps thinking it's daytime, but actually is quarter past 6, so you come back out and it's full dark!
I'm in the southern UK, and I'd take our late-May/early-August "it's light while I'm awake and dark while I (should be) asleep" all year round if I could get it.
You could become peripatetic and seek out the spot of opposite latitude during the dark season. So you could have 15 hours of daylight, 12 hours of daylight, then 15 hours of daylight again. I've thought that with idle rich amounts of money I'd get a very large yacht and sail the pacific rim in time with the seasons, perpetual spring, summer, spring, summer.
We have different definitions of rich. It's not just the cost of living. It's also the time and to deal with the governments to allow this, it's having the money to spend the time, it's the job that allows this, it's the time away from family not being catastrophic for someone's wellbeing. Frankly, this is vastly infeasible for 99% of people. I'd easily consider the remaining 1% "rich" in some way
The first time I visited the tropics, I never realised how much I associated the dark with it being cold!
We went for dinner in the afternoon, sun was up, it was blazing hot, everything normal so far. We had dinner while the sun set in a nice air-conditioned restaurant, so it was dark when it was time to leave, and I walked out into the tropical night and was so confused why it was still warm and moist outside!
Similar experience for me but probably even more extreme.
I'm originally from São Paulo, Brazil, the Tropic of Capricorn almost cuts through the city itself. Sunrises and sunsets are very quick events, sitting somewhere to watch it would take some 30 minutes, and then darkness.
Even after 10+ years of living in Sweden I still get mesmerised by sunrises and sunsets here, they last for so long and I get to be awed by the changing of colours, shadows, shapes, for hours. It's one of my favourite things to do during summers, just to be out somewhere by a lake with some friends, having food and drinks, and watching the endless twilight.
> When living in Stockholm, I came to appreciate the various levels of twilight and darkness, rather than thinking of day and night so strictly.
In Chile you get somewhat long days and short days too, especially in the south, but instead of trying to be super precise about sunlight, the afternoon and night blend in and sort of crossfade. You end up with "8 de la tarde" (8 in the afternoon), and "6 de la noche" (6 at night) depending on the season.
7/8/9 de la noche (vs tarde) is used by 60/97/100% of American Spanish speakers vs 1/16/97% of European Spanish speakers. I wonder if the difference is due to Spain's generally late sunsets.
It would be interesting to redo this analysis with a corpus that indicates seasons though.
I think I have used "8 in the afternoon" even as close to the equator as Atlanta (~34 N). Our latest sunset is 8:52 pm, surprisingly late, because we are very far west in our time zone.
