Wow, 23 pages in about one month discussing British way of telling time
Well, as a native Norwegian, when we learned "Oxford English" at school (then mandatory from 4th grade at age of 10, we started school at age of 7) we were taught:
5:35 = "The time is twentyfive to six".
What confused most of us was the "Half past five" since in Norway "Half six" means "half to six" (5:30), as in German, Dutch, Swedish and Danish (and probably other languages).
Another thing in Norway and also (maybe not common but occuring) in German is that 5:35 is "five-past-half-six" (NO="Fem-over-halv-seks" DE="Fünf-nach-halb-sechs").
Though Russian is *very* different.
"piyat-chertvyorta" means something like "five-into-fourth". That may be translated into "five minutes into the fourth hour" and means five past three..