Addicted to Air Conditioning? Better Think Twice Before Moving to Europe
The more you know before you go, the less shocked you'll be when you get here.
Pop quiz. Which countries are the top three consumers of air conditioning?
Japan has the greatest “penetration rate,” meaning the most households with air conditioning (91%), but they don’t consume the most electricity because the Japanese don’t use central air. They rely on something called the mini-split system, separate, ceiling-mounted units that are individually controlled. Instead of cooling the entire house, they only cool the room they’re using.
Korea also consumes mega-megawatts of air conditioning (86% penetration rate). Air quality is notorious poor there, which means A/C units require frequent professional cleanings. Rolling brownouts and blackouts are also a problem. That’s why usage is often restricted. If you consume too much, you will receive a visit from your building manager telling you to use less.
In Korea, once your energy consumption exceeds a certain amount, the payment rate goes up, so there are powerful incentives to do what’s right by everybody and not just what’s right for yourself.
Try telling an American to restrict his usage. My guess is he’d start ranting about his “rights” and “personal liberties” before pulling out a gun and shooting you.
No surprise that America consumes by far the greatest amount of air conditioning, even with their commensurate 90% penetration rate. That’s because air conditioning is not only isolating, it’s addictive. Get a little, and you always want more. Our entire American lifestyle is addictive: fast food designed to administer just the right jolt of sugar, fat, and salt, big cars with velvety smooth suspensions that guzzle an entire dinosaur’s worth of fuel, doctor-prescribed painkillers that get people strung out inside of two weeks. Our national motto, “If a little is good, more is better”, should be broadcast from a Jumbotron.
If you move to Europe, it is unlikely you will find a house or apartment with central air conditioning. Europe simply doesn’t have it. And it’s not as though the barometer doesn’t reach sweltering temperatures here. Behold the forecast this week for Amelia, which is in the Umbria region of Italy—not even the hottest part of the country.
Is it really quantifiably that hot? Hell, yes, it’s that hot. It’s all-nine-of-Dante’s-concentric-circles-of-hell that hot.
To be sure, John and I live in a 90-square-meter apartment in a Renaissance palazzo with no cross-ventilation. What we do have (which is consistent with most Italian abodes) are windows that open. The trick is to leave your windows open at night, which draws in all the cool air, and then shut them in the morning before it gets too hot. I let the Amelia cathedral bells alert me. They ring at 6PM (time to open the windows) and then again at 6AM (time to close the windows).
You have to close the shutters, too, by the way. Don’t let the sun beat down on your windows or you’ll regret it. We sleep with a fan blowing (John throws off more BTUs than a blast furnace) and I work in front of a second fan.
This is, by the way, heretical to most Italians who, whether they admit it or not, still subscribe to the medieval superstition of colpo d’aria.
Colpo d’aria (it literally means “cut of the air”) is a belief that any air blowing on you will lead to febbre (fever) and make you deathly ill. John was in the car with an event organizer the other day, a perfectly lovely Italian woman driving a brand-new vehicle. She was gracious enough to roll down the windows but refused to turn on the air conditioning. Meanwhile, John was melting in his seat—and he’s a tough, well-conditioned American immigrant
.One summer about four or five years ago, I was so overheated, I slept in the bathtub. We traveled 70 kilometers just to go to the one place that did have air conditioning, which was the Porta Romana mall. For six weeks, temperatures stayed in the triple digits. There were times I had trouble breathing. In those cases, you take the coldest shower possible, put towels on the bed, and then lay on them in your altogether. Avoiding heat stroke is all you think about.
In August of that year, John and I were in Città di Castello, the uppermost reaches of Umbria. He was performing with a jazz trio. Our hotel room (and this is hardly unusual) had no air conditioning. Worse, there were so many tourists in town, no other rooms were available. When I walked into the bedroom, there was a wasps’ nest in one corner of the ceiling.
All I could do was prop myself up in a chair in the living room, keep an eye on the horrid beasts, and watch bad Italian television. There was a vibrator infomercial I will never ever forget. The diagrams alone would have had the FCC clutching its pearls. I spent hours trying to think of a way to broadcast the infomercial to prosperity gospel/snake-oil salesman Joel Osteen’s congregation during his Sunday sermon. He preaches in front of three screens, so the possibilities were theoretically endless.
Dildo versus dildo. How freaking meta would that be?
Lest you think you’ll come to Italy and just buy an air conditioning unit for your house, think again. Most Italian households are allotted only three kilowatts of energy. If you’re running the hot water heater, say, and a vacuum, and the toaster, you’re going to trip a breaker. Even the most energy efficient air conditioner sucks up massive amounts of amperage.
You also have to find a way to vent it. Where we live in the centro storico (historic district) of our village, there are strict laws governing such things. You can’t just shove a vent hose out the window or bore through an external wall.
After almost a decade here, I’ve grown used to having no air conditioning and may actually prefer it. Massive amounts of refrigerated air make me … well, cold. I love having the windows open. I love having a relationship with the outdoors.
Yes, the occasional bat flies in. Deal with it.
As soon as the sun goes down, Italians emerge from their houses for the evening passeggiata. During these leisurely perambulations around the village, they stop and chat with friends or enjoy a nice aperitivo at the bar. The local park is packed with families until the wee hours of the morning, all looking to avoid the heat of their apartments. During last summer’s World Cup soccer championships (Italy kicked that ass, thank you), there was a screen hung between two trees in the park, and the whole village turned out to watch. It was charming. I could hear the cheering all the way from my house.
Don’t try to change Italy. She doesn’t want to change. You either accept her on her terms or you can go home. I’m so in love with this country, I am willing to pay damn near any personal cost to be here—and I do.
But it’s not easy. Italy never promised you easy.
She promised you your soul.
Copyright © 2022 Stacey Eskelin
What’s the hottest summer you’ve ever sweated through? I want to hear all about it. Leave your comments below.
you should get some box fans that will fit in your windows. Spread them as far apart as circumstances will permit, then close all of the windows in between. Orient one fan so that it blows in the other so that it acts as exhaust. If you had cross ventilation, the exhaust would be enough. (Do you have a skylight that opens?)
Heat waves of this magnitude are a fairly recent phenomenon for Europeans. Yes, they would happen before, once every few years. But not like now, every year, several times a year. Lets all give a standing slow clap for Anthropogenic Global Warming (AGW.)
I never had AC growing up in San Diego. But that is the most temperate locale in all of North America, and something akin to classic, year 'round Mediterranean climate. Dad just set up this enormous fan in the den, turned it to exhaust, and the rest of us just opened our windows.
The first time I experienced AC, I was in basic training in the army, in Fort Jackson South Carolina. The MIDDLE of Summer. The platoon I was assigned to was stationed in these brand new barracks, with AC that chilled the interior to something just this side of a meat locker. So you're all day working and sweating your ass off in 90 + 90 temp and humidity, and walk inside that freezer; no surprise but about 1/10th of the platoon wound up in the hospital with some form of pneumonia. We'd have had fewer casualties if Charlie was still shooting at us.
When I was living in The City ("San Francisco," for you uncouth who don't know), it got unpleasantly warm a few times. I then collected up some air miles from all the travel I was doing for my job and went to Tahiti. Spent a few nights on the next island over, Moorea, and that hotel only had a ceiling fan. But I was young enough, and had missed the most humid part of the year, so that was enough.
It was only when I moved to Chicago that the world beat me into AC submission. Seriously, it really is the humidity. Taking care of my dad's place in Prescott, AZ, the swamp cooler made an 80 deg night feel like 68. But when it comes to that Midwest humidity? Siblings, you are nothing but that funny fish they serve in Boston. (Totally scrod. What? You never saw that word in the past-pluperfect form before?)
Now I'm still living in the Midwest, but it's degenerated to a 20 year old, 30' X 8' travel trailer parked behind a pole barn. I've got an 18kbtu, dual vent portable unit, and it can only barely keep the temps at 90 when the outside is sunny and 95+. (Trailers are your basic "EZ Bake Oven" in the summer.)
By the bye, central AC is one of the worst things you can do. It is wildly less efficient than window units in each room. I no longer have the data at my fingertips, but this is a demonstrated fact. (Consider: why chill a room that no one is using? Yet that is what central imposes.)
A vibrator. Exactly what you're looking for when it's a gazillion degrees outside. Love it....🤣
Erin and I had central a/c installed in our house four years ago. Here in Portland, it's technically not a necessity, but it does help the resale value. Last summer, though, when we had two days above 115, (Hell is real. Who knew?) the air conditioning was no longer a "nice to have."
(Yeah, WHAT global climate change??)
I do agree, though, that Americans have to accept the idea that when you leave the Fatherland, the idea of universal air conditioning goes out the window. I grew to loathe Communist-era office buildings in Serbia and Kosovo with sealed windows. During the summers, when everyone's smoking in the offices and what little air there is quickly turns blue, you can begin to see your life pass before your eyes.
As long as I'm here in the USofA, though, you can have my air conditioning when you pry it from my cold, dead fingers.🤭