The first paragraph of this article led me to believe that the piece is referring to an attitude that is typical of most European people. Yet, AC units or multiple fans are quite common in Southern European households, offices and shops, where temperatures are quite high during summer. Not only that, but there are cultural norms or preventive measures in place: for example, shops used to close (some still do) during the hottest hours of the day in Spain and Italy, and fresh water is freely and readily available at public fountains in many Italian cities. I live in Germany, and here I get the feeling that “extremely hot summer days” simply weren’t the norm, and now that summers are getting warmer everybody is a bit unprepared. But I don’t get the feeling that AC units are taboo for everybody: surely there are people that have their motivations not to use an AC unit at all, but also people that would gladly take the chance to be able to work or simply rest in a cooler room and resort to AC if that was the only possible option. Overall, I get the impression that this post was written with a very specific subset of German/European persons in mind, and it depicts something different from my experience.
The first paragraph of this article led me to believe that the piece is referring to an attitude that is typical of most European people. Yet, AC units or multiple fans are quite common in Southern European households, offices and shops, where temperatures are quite high during summer. Not only that, but there are cultural norms or preventive measures in place: for example, shops used to close (some still do) during the hottest hours of the day in Spain and Italy, and fresh water is freely and readily available at public fountains in many Italian cities.
I live in Germany, and here I get the feeling that “extremely hot summer days” simply weren’t the norm, and now that summers are getting warmer everybody is a bit unprepared. But I don’t get the feeling that AC units are taboo for everybody: surely there are people that have their motivations not to use an AC unit at all, but also people that would gladly take the chance to be able to work or simply rest in a cooler room and resort to AC if that was the only possible option.
Overall, I get the impression that this post was written with a very specific subset of German/European persons in mind, and it depicts something different from my experience.