It is hot. Within a few days, the temperature has gone from "delightfully pleasant," (he said in his weather broadcaster voice) to "down right humid and uncomfortable." (again, in the same broadcast voice, with a flood of perspiration coming from my brow)
I tend to keep my weather complaints to a minimum for a few reasons. First, we are fortunate to have four seasons in Germany; I did not have that experience as a child and I appreciate each season as it comes. Second, it is rare that a weather extreme lasts more than a handful of days. Again, my experience, particularly with summer, was all about 100 consecutive days of pure hell, whereas here we might have a week (or two) of consecutive heat wave. And even then, it is never really that bad.
Hopefully I have not spoken too soon, being that we are still in the month of June.
And, I do need to confirm (again) that there are aspects of a short heat wave in Europe that can be somewhat worse than heat waves from Texas, even though the duration is shorter.
There are always a couple of nights during summer when it never cools off. And that is precisely what helped trigger this week's post. Thursday night was the first night of being unable to sleep, and I got another repeat last night as I tossed and turned trying to fall asleep.
That is the thing that bugs me the most about summer: as long as the temperature drops back down at night, I can deal with however warm it might get during the day. This is something that annoys most everyone (I remember my barber talking about this 40 years ago), and because most Europeans do not have any air conditioning, this tends to become a real, albeit brief, issue.
Take my friend, for example. He lives in a Dachboden down the street. A Dachboden is basically the top floor of an apartment building. He is on the 4th floor (which equates to the 5th floor in US terms), and has repeatedly complained about the summer temperatures inside his flat. If the weather report shows 35 degrees (Celsius), then inside the city it will actually be 2 or 3 degrees warmer, and INSIDE the flat, still another 2-3 degrees. That basically means that on a day like today, it is going to be close to 40 degrees inside his house. By doing a quick conversion from C to F, you will see that to be close to 100 degrees.
I am sure you will agree that this is a far cry from delightfully pleasant.
My situation, in comparison, is not so brutal. I can open the front windows in the front living room, and also the bathroom window and my kitchen balcony door, on the backside of my flat. If there is a wind, I will at least get some air flow. If there is no wind, then things get still in a hurry.
One small drawback is that leaving my bathroom window open does allow for some peeping, while I am peeing, if you will excuse the expression. The window is inconveniently located, I must say. Truth be told, it never has resulted in many awkward moments, but sometimes I might be in a hurry, forget that the window is wide open, sit down to take care of things, and it is only then when I hear the workmen doing some construction on the flat across the way talking to themselves.
While the odds of someone really being able to see me are somewhat small, they exist all the same.
As one might do when they are a successful bachelor set in their ways, I eat most of my meals in the living room, using the coffee table as my dining table. My kitchen table is used as my office desk.
Because of the home office experience, I tend to spend the majority of my time in the kitchen. I quite like the set up, and am very used to it. Recently, however, I am juggling laptops: my business laptop is obviously used for work purposes, standard Monday through Friday, and sometimes a couple of minutes during the weekend.
The private laptop normally remains in the living room on a chest of drawers during the work week. I can stand and use it as needed when taking care of private things (like banking, etc.) Because I also have my studio microphone set up in the living room (as you do as a bachelor), this is where I skype with my family.
Now, on Tuesday and Thursday evenings, I have a German class, and need to use my private laptop to log in and participate. So, after work on those days, I take the work laptop into the living room, and bring the private laptop into the kitchen. I have gotten so used to various video platforms over the years, and never really cared what people saw in my background until I started the job in January. My boss quickly suggested that a busy kitchen did not look so professional, so I found a background photo which looks just like an office which I tend to use. It is not optimal, but it suits the purpose.
What I forgot is that one platform background does not carry on to the next, and while I tend not to care much when speaking with family or friends, I might have liked the opportunity to modify my background before joining class. Unfortunately, this is not possible, and gave me cause to wish that I had done some tidying up when my teacher asked me about the bottles lined up on the counter behind me. We had just been discussing beverages of choice, and she was wondering if the bottles she saw were wine bottles. I tried to clarify that no, no they were not wine bottles but instead empty olive oil bottles and that I had simply not yet taken everything down to the recycling thing in front of my house. Because there quite a few, and the fact that it is a rather good quality of oil, I could understand why everyone in the class suddenly thought I had a real passion for wine.
This is not really something I wanted to share. and I made darn sure to take those things downstairs before the next class. Likewise I elected to remove the roll of paper towels, the sponges, and any other things that indicate I actually live in the room. It is not that my kitchen is terribly untidy, but it might be a little cluttered. Again, it is my clutter and I am not up for a photo shoot in BH and Gs or any other magazine. Furthermore, I am not really interested in sharing scenes from my living room, which resembles a college dorm room, complete with vintage posters from music groups that probably existed before most of my classmates were actually born.
The good thing, of course, is that I may not like it but I can take the heat.
So, I am staying in the kitchen and recycling more frequently.
See you out there
bryan
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