I think this heat wave is
beginning to affect the Germans. The other day, on a crowded, stuffy bus, a man
threw up between his legs at his seat and tried to act natural about it. It
didn't work. I left the bus to escape its fresh barf smell and witnessed a homeless man jump in front of a hose, which a storeowner was using to
water a tree along the sidewalk. The storeowner seemed, surprisingly,
nonplussed.
It's the third or
fourth week of the heat wave that's scorching northern Europe and it's starting
to show. Businessmen in suits melt into their seats on the train, kindergarten
teachers chase their young charges in slow motion, and city workers lean a little more
heavily on their shovels.
This is a country
that is not only completely unused to this heat, but completely unprepared for
it. In Southern Ontario, I would've retreated to an air conditioned room with
blackout curtains and stayed until September. Here, few have the luxury of air conditioning. Many
apartments have wide windows that are great for letting the air flow through
it, but not so good for summer heat waves were the temperature doesn't drift
below 25 degrees some nights.
The trains, trams, and buses are no better. Most have small windows, designed to let a little air in, but are sealed shut to keep the spring-winter-autumn chill out. In this weather, they've been mobile saunas,
Offices are not
spared either. At Ogilvy, we used shutters to keep the sun out and windows to let the
breeze in to avoid using the air conditioning, which was used so seldom that it
was always set to Arctic and people would run to the thermostat and shut off
the vent above their work station. When enough people did this, the air conditioning was pretty much turned off
and we'd switch to shutters and windows again.
My office in Aachen
also lacks air conditioning, so we're also relying on windows for a cool
breeze, or at least a warm breeze, and shutters, which for some reason open
suddenly for no reason other than to blind the workers inside with searing, hot
sunlight. The heat in the office can be so debilitating that many of my colleagues avoid coming
into the office and work from home, where they can at least stay cool and, if
they're like me, work in basketball shorts and an undershirt.
When I do work from home, our apartment turns into a cool bunker. The shutters – first floor apartments in
Germany have shutters over the windows, in case of burglars, peepers, and
zombies – are shut and a fan is strategically set up.
Usually the German
summer is a benign thing and the Germans partake in summer activities with
typical efficiency. They patiently line up at ice cream shops, many stretching around the
corner. On sunnier days, locals dash for the public parks, peeling off layers,
while the rest of us are getting our shorts and miniskirts from storage. By the
end of May, most of Germany is walking about, bronzed from laying in public
parks under the sun, and happily eating their ice cream.
This summer is different. In the heat wave's first week, I'd see people who thought they could
handle an afternoon of tanning in the park. They looked like they fell asleep
in a brick kiln – bright red, visibly thirsty, stumbling to the shade. They still
haven't quite discovered the North American cooling tactic: the movie theatre.
We've watched a couple flicks and haven't had to fight a crowd to get good seats.
They have, however, gone
running to the local lakes and pools. On Sunday, we went to a pool/strand in
the Dorf's north end. Getting there was like crossing a desert. The grass is
scorched brown and I was sure I saw a sun-bleached buffalo skull. Waiting on
the platform to change trains was like looking through the haze in the
Badlands. The train seemed like a mirage.
At the pool/strand,
people laid towels on the burnt, brown grass or flocked to the shade under the
trees and tents. But the water, with no clouds in the sky, was blue and cool.
It was perfect, and you couldn't appreciate how great a swim that like that is
unless you're coping with a heat wave in a country that is still learning how to handle heat waves.
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| The Badlands of the Dorf |