R1: Marina Erakovic (NZL) & Laura Robson v Stephanie Foretz Gacon & Eva Hridinova (FRA/CZE)

Miriambee wrote:

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philwrig wrote:

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I think tomorrow's match is a toss up, Morita doesn't like clay but she is in better form than Laura. Will be slightly less windy tomorrow but it will still be an issue.
The winner likely to get Cibulkova and probably will be on centre and thus shown on Eurosport.
Also never knew that Lisbon was on same time as us, always thought they were CET.

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 Portugal is one of the few places in the world  the same as us.

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Yes, it always seems strange that Portugal isn't on the same time zone as Spain but it's the only part of the European mainland that still uses Western European Time (i.e. GMT/BST to us), all the rest of the countries or parts of countries in Europe that are on the same time as us are islands.

What is less well-known these days, I think, is that countries like France and Belgium (*) used to be on WET too until the Germans imposed German time (i.e. CET) on the occupied countries during WW II. It was one of the few things that didn't get reversed at the end of the war. Franco later ruled that Spain would switch from WET to CET too, so Portugal was left on its own rather than making its own decision to be different.

Portugal has tried moving to CET a couple of times during my lifetime (most recently in the early-mid 1990s) but for some reason reverted back.

(*) Why not the Netherlands? .. you may ask. They were switched too, but they had been 20 minutes (!) ahead of the UK and Belgium before WW II ... and even more bizarrely, until 1937, GMT + 19 mins 32.13 seconds  - I believe the logic behind the +0:19:32.13 offset was that this matched the exact longitude of Amsterdam ... and to be fair to the Dutch, a century or so earlier different cities in the UK were on slightly different longitude-based times until the advent of the railways led to them being standardised.

-- Edited by steven on Sunday 28th of April 2013 09:55:37 PM

Back even
4 - 4

0 - 3
Second set rapidly going the same way as the first.

Jo ;( hope its not serious.

I think tomorrow's match is a toss up, Morita doesn't like clay but she is in better form than Laura. Will be slightly less windy tomorrow but it will still be an issue.
The winner likely to get Cibulkova and probably will be on centre and thus shown on Eurosport.
Also never knew that Lisbon was on same time as us, always thought they were CET.

Wow, I tip my hat off for your knowledge about this Steven !!