They’re in the sweltering heat of southern Europe: ‘It’s like an oven here’
With the summer holidays approaching, many people are planning to head out into the sun. But with temperatures above forty degrees, Southern Europe is not what it once was. It is difficult for many vacationers around the Mediterranean. And for the people who live there. Temperatures of nearly 50 degrees approaching in Sicily.
“It’s very hot, yeah,” says Margie. “Especially when there is a little wind.” The Tilburg citizen is on vacation on the Greek island of Kos for eighteen days. “We still have a week to go. We’ve been coming here for thirty years, precisely because of the warm weather. So you won’t hear us complain at all. You know that when you go here. And if there’s a little wind, you don’t like it.”
They also have their own ways of dealing with heat. Like riding bicycles to the beach, “it’s possible,” or lying on the beach under an umbrella. “My daughter went with her friend – who was here for the first time – to a mountain village. Look, this is really hard, I’m not ‘functional’ anymore. I don’t recommend viewing fossils in these temperatures. Certainly not between twelve and four in the afternoon.”
“It’s like an oven when you get out of your house.”
Paul is also sweating in Greece. He’s not there on vacation, but he lives there. On the beautiful island of Santorini. “For thirteen years. We moved here because of my Greek wife.” There runs a wholesaler of souvenirs. “It’s incredibly warm here,” says the entrepreneur from Mel. “Move your finger and you start to sweat. The Greeks are also indoors in the afternoon, so they don’t burn. They work in the morning and evening. It’s worse between one and four in the afternoon. The sun shines really hard here.”
This is also his motto: “Stay indoors with shutters on the windows. Especially when the sun shines on them. The fan runs here all day. It’s like a furnace when you go out of your house. Do you know that if you want to take a shower here, you first have to fill a bucket with water and throw it away?” This water boils because of the heat. Only after that bucket do you get colder water.”
“We’re adjusting to the rhythm here.”
Mickey Speicherman traveled from Pest to Empuriabrava, Spain. The temperature there also rises to a great height. “But we adjust to the rhythm here,” she says. “Saturday and Sunday it will be 34 to 38 degrees here. There is also a lot of wind, with a force of 6. But it is warm, such a dry wind. So we take it easy. We go to the sea a lot and drink a lot. We want to do something, we go early . go with the windHe says.”
When she booked her vacation, she didn’t find the temperature an obstacle. “We knew it was going to be hot here, but we really like this area. The people here are so relaxed and so friendly. That’s why we go here so often. We enjoy ourselves and don’t care about the weather. We adjust to it again on.”
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