Parse CEST/CET time in python

Question

I have these date strings:

Fri Oct  7 16:00:09 CEST 2011

I want to convert them to UTC. I have tried with this implementation:

Answer 1

Use the parsedatetime library.

Answer 2

There are two problems here:

1. You're using "%m" instead of "%b"
2. The standard lib can't parse "CEST", it understands only very few time zone names. See also here: What possible values does datetime.strptime() accept for %Z?