My European summer starter pack
My European summer starter pack
How to pack for your European summer vacation when your European summer vacation is climate change!
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On the first day the high crept above 35 degrees Celsius in Rome, I took it as a playful challenge. “Are you up to it?”
This was early July, and we all knew that whatever we felt now was only a harbinger of the endless days of radiating malaise to come. But after two full summers here, I was sure, this time, that I was ready, that with proper preparation, I could withstand extreme temperatures for as long as they might emerge. This was the can-do American in me, believing that optimism, organization and sheer will were worthy opponents to whatever the natural world might supply.
My version of preparation meant never leaving the house without three items: a filled water bottle, a container of sunscreen and a folding fan that always made me feel like an elegant older woman when I unfurled it on public transit, relishing its distinct clicking sound. I placed these items in my tote bag that morning, understanding what they signified: Summer had come.
While perhaps cognitively I had understood this truth, physically, I clearly had not. Because as I boarded the H bus, which ends at Termini, Rome’s central train station, and therefore is always crowded, I found myself beset by a certain nausea. Rome’s buses were never a pleasurable experience—this went without saying.
But this time, something was different. I had passed Rome’s mammoth Altare della Patria almost every day, but now, when I looked out the bus window, I saw only flashes of white light, like an over-exposed photograph. There was no more external cacophony—I couldn’t hear anything at all. As my senses faltered one-by-one, I understood with a painful clarity what was happening: I was going to faint. Trembling, I managed to extricate my water bottle from my tote bag and take a sip. A seated old man was watching this scene curiously. His outstretched hand offered me a caramella, but I demurred, knowing better than to accept gifts from old Italian men.
Miraculously, I managed to get off at the next stop, and I took refuge on a sidewalk just steps from Via Nazionale, surrounded by hordes of tourists. I called my mom, in tears, terrified by the fact that the one thing I had taken for granted—I can traverse this city by myself—had been called into question.
She insisted that I take a cab back home—I was too weakened to disagree. Nestled comfortably in the backseat, strong gusts of air conditioning, so rare in Rome, wafted my way. Still, I was left with this haunting reminder, that even a relatively healthy young woman could be felled quite easily by these weather conditions. The body, much like our environment, was always teaching us this lesson. You think you’re in control. You’re not.
***
It’s almost depressing to read the meteorological reports at this point, because they all say the same thing: We’re breaking records. Constantly.
June 2024, for example, marked the thirteenth consecutive month that set a record for its high temperatures, per the European Union’s Copernicus Climate Change Service. The global average temperature over the past year was also the highest on record.
This is particularly striking when we look at a chart of the highest global average temperatures over time. Over the last 50 years, the ten highest annual maximum global-average daily temperatures have all been within the last decade. There’s a notable jump between 2014 and 2015, from below 16.5 Celsius, or 61.7 degrees Fahrenheit, to between 16.5 and 17.0, or as high as 62.6 Fahrenheit. Yes, as a physical experience, these temperatures—less than a degree in Fahrenheit—are not demonstrably different. But as a clear and worrying trend, they represent how quickly even our global average daily temperatures are skyrocketing.
The director of the Copernicus Climate Change Service, Carlo Buontempo, noted in a press release what these numbers might mean for our climate future—spoiler: nothing good. July 22 was the hottest day in recent history, immediately besting the record set only the day before on July 21.
“What is truly staggering is how large the difference is between the temperature of the last 13 months and the previous temperature records,” Buontempo said. “We are now in truly uncharted territory and, as the climate keeps warming, we are bound to see new records being broken in future months and years.”
The problem with our new daily reality is that even the idea of a “heatwave” now seems quaint. To me, this can be best exemplified by two Euronews articles published about a month apart, one on July 18 and the other on August 13. Both have almost identical headlines: “When will Europe’s heatwave end?”
Perhaps the use of the term “heatwave” here is a misnomer, as a “heatwave” would imply a finite period in which things begin and end. The World Meteorological Organization defines a heatwave as a “period of abnormally hot weather that can last from a few days to months.” (Interestingly, it also notes that higher minimum temperatures are part of what constitute a heatwave. In theory, cooler temperatures would allow the body to recover from high temps reached in the peak of the day, according to WMO. But when there is no respite, there is no recovery. Anyone who has slept in a hot Roman apartment can attest to this.)
To me, “heatwave” also implies something survivable—not necessarily by the average person, as last summer’s historic temperatures caused tens of thousands of excess deaths. What I mean is survivable in a psychological sense, soldiering on knowing that there will be some ultimate relief. I’m not convinced soldiering on is a viable strategy anymore, not when we so obviously continue to break record after record in a social structure not set up to handle these kinds of temperatures for months on end.
The statistics of last summer bear repeating, as I think they are a disturbing foreshadowing of what is likely to come. From a study published in Nature Medicine and reported by The New York Times: more than 47,000 Europeans died in 2023 from “heat-related causes.”
“We’re quickly approaching the limits to what the human body can withstand,” said Jordan Clark, a senior policy associate at Duke University’s Heat Policy Innovation Hub, to The New York Times’ Austyn Gaffney.
One major difference between Europe and the United States is, yes, the widespread use of air conditioning. Last summer, I wrote for Teen Vogue about the inherent challenges in this question. Relying on AC is bad for the environment. Having no AC makes it harder for our bodies to tolerate extreme heat. Still, the difference in AC usage between Europe and the U.S. is quite stunning. Almost 90% of American homes had some form of air conditioning in 2020 compared with about 20% of European households in 2019.
But let’s return to Clark’s quote. There are so many reasons to be worried about extreme heat, most of all the fact that it’s simply a symptom of a larger problem (the end of our planet?, but I digress). Yet if we choose to worry about the individual rather than existential impacts, I think it’s worth asking ourselves the cumulative effects of withstanding extreme heat over a long period of time.
In June, the American Psychological Association published a story on “how heat affects the mind.” The cited results were, unsurprisingly, concerning. For those who survive heat stroke, roughly 10 to 28% of these have persistent brain damage, per a 2022 study. People on most psychotropic medications are more susceptible to heat exhaustion and stroke—this comprises about one-sixth of all Americans. The neurotransmitters that affect our mood, like dopamine and serotonin, also play a role in our body’s thermoregulation.
“Extreme heat can make people more depressed or irritable, it can bring on psychotic outbreaks, and people on certain psychiatric medications are more sensitive to heat,” said Jane Gilbert, Miami-Dade County’s Chief Heat Officer, to the APA’s Stephanie Pappas.
Heat is also linked to increased physical aggression—a study of 28 U.S. cities showed a 19.4% increase in homicides with large temperature upticks. And for anyone who has tried and failed to work in a sweltering apartment, heat can have an impact on the way we think, on our ability to be productive. A group of Boston students, half in air-conditioned buildings and half not, were directed to complete two cognitive tasks each morning during a heatwave. The students in non-air-conditioned buildings took 13% longer on both activities.
***
By mid-August, I began to realize that my cavalier attitude towards the heat had been just that—overly cavalier. “Sto soffrendooooooo,” I wrote my friends in text messages, elongating the final letter in a way that I hoped both communicated my millennial nonchalance and my absolute desperation. I suppose it worked, as a friend took pity on me and let me use his air-conditioned apartment as a co-working space during the day. Yet each time we left the house, the sudden wave of hot air reminded me that the cool apartment interior was the fantasy and the outside world was reality.
It was in late August that the rain finally came and, suddenly, there was a brief dip in temperature. When I stepped outside, I thought I could physically feel the sensation of my brain contract. “Not to sound like an Instagram caption,” I sent my friend a burbling voice message, “but I can actually think again.”
In the corridor of my apartment, I spotted my downstairs neighbor, who was watering the plants that she had placed in the windows, hoping in vain to resurrect just an inch of their already-dried-out leaves. “Are you escaping to anywhere for August?” I asked, because we both wore the well-worn facial expressions of people accustomed to waking up each day covered in a persistent sheen of sweat.
“No, I’ll be here,” she told me, and when I asked if she had any kind of air conditioning, even a Pinguino, the small, portable machine that I had permanently stationed in my bedroom, she said no. “We just have fans.”
I looked at her in disbelief. She and her husband had lived in the apartment building for 50 years, peacefully coexisting for 50 summers, for 50 Augusts. Would this one be her breaking-point? It’s only going to get worse, she told me, to which I nodded emphatically.
“I think we’re going to have to get air conditioning installed,” she sighed, fanning a hand by her face. “It’s just not bearable.”
I heard the capitulation in this sentence, the feeling of surrendering a promise one had made to oneself (I can survive without air conditioning) to the environmental reality. There was a heaviness to it.
“But I forget how difficult it is to have work done in your house,” she finished the thought. “So I’ll probably just say the same thing next summer.”