Yes, the time difference between us and Germany really can be a bummer sometimes.
time zone difference as the reason for the my missing out on the bonus chests be reasonable if it were true but here's what happened and here's what I think happened
What happened:
the timezone where I live at is GMT +8. The Friendship Day bonus started at 4 pm my local time, which is 10 am GMT +2. This is also the time where the daily decay happens for mana, sentient goods and seeds, i.e. this is the time where the server takes to be the "start" of a new day. My NH resets at 7:30 am the next day, my local time, which was another ~16 h from the time the Friendship Day started. However, when I got around to visiting, I only got 3 chests, no bonus at all.
What I think happened:
The bonus lasted only until the end of 30 July, GMT +2 (i.e. 14 h from the start of the event). Given my NH reset in ~16 h, I never got a chance at the bonus. That's stupid because first,
it didn't even last a full day in its own timezone and second, it was barely 30 July when the event started for many people e.g. it was 1 am on the U.S. West Coast and just 3 pm when the event ended at midnight, 31 Jul GMT +2. How many people would have totally missed the chance on that? If it had even began on midnight, 30 Jul, GMT +2 and lasted a full day, many MORE people could have gotten a chance, since it would still be 3 pm, 29 Jul in U.S. West Coast, meaning people on the West Coast had a whole afternoon and evening to get the bonus and even those on EST would have gotten an entire evening. In my case, had I known that the bonus would have ended less than 24h after it started (yes, yes, they technically did no wrong, my comprehension of "for the day of 30 Jul" is sound), I'd have visited other map neighbors instead of waiting for my usual FS NH to reset. That said, it still doesn't exclude the possibility that I visit
all neighbors possible and would have had no open neighbors to give NH to before the event was over.
What's the point of a U.S. server when nothing is U.S. about it other than the label? Numerous other online games have country-specific servers and the point is that events can be adjusted to the local time zone. The least they could do for a 1-day-only event like this one was to extend the time it was being offered for, taking into account the touted "U.S." localization of the server. I know missing out on NH chests is no biggie but how the whole thing went down was just stupid. Does no one have common sense in the dev team? This fiasco is so inane I can't even.