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Here's a portable version for those of us who do not use Bash:

  a=$(printf '\xb%-47.s' \
  |nc -uw1 ntp.metas.ch 123 \
  |exec xxd -s40 -l4 -p) 
  b=$(printf %d\\n 0x"$a")
  c=$((b-2208988800))
  date -r$c

There is a way to do the xxd step using original netcat. Included with nc was a short program called nc-data. It converts from btoa and atob for shoveling data to nc.

Slower than xxd but still useful. It also shows octal, decimal and byte number.

Another exercise might be a one-liner for the TAICLOCK protocol: http://cr.yp.to/proto/taiclock.txt (Alternative to SNTP with smaller packets and support for leap seconds.)