Today it’s hard for me to believe that a few weeks ago, at the end of May, I had several geraniums still ‘over-wintering’ next to the windows in my apartment, waiting for nighttime temps to be warm enough to put them back outside.

I was worried we were in for a repeat of last summer, when there were only a few isolated days it got hot enough to want to go to the lake or a swimming pool.

Who would have thought Berlin would follow up its the coldest winter in 16 years with its hottest summer weekend in, well, ever.

On Saturday and Sunday, the high temperature in Berlin reached 40C (that’s 104F) both days - with parts of central Berlin recording 41C on Sunday afternoon. That breaks the previous record high temperature of 38.9 that was set in August of 2015.

Farther east in Brandenburg, near the border with Poland, it was even hotter, with the Spree-Oder district setting Germany’s new heat record at 41.7 (107F).

The heat was so intense it warped train tracks and melted asphalt on city streets.

Personally, I have never been so glad to live in a ground-floor apartment in a newer building as I was these past few days. The windows are triple-glazed and we have metal exterior shutters on all of our them that let us black out the sun during the hot parts of the day.

I wrote on my personal blog last year about how the German-style ‘dreh-kipp fenster’ (open/kip windows) help keep our homes cool and well ventilated without air conditioning.

What we did

Most of the time we were able to cope with strict adherence to our summer strategy of Stoßlüften (impact ventilation - opening all the windows up fully) early in the morning, then closing all of the windows and shutters before the air got really hot. I also followed a tip from this great Reddit thread and put our fans next to the windows in the morning to blow air outwards.

We limited our trips outside during the heat of the day and also stored pitchers of cold water in the refrigerator and snacked on frozen fruit to help stay cool.

Still, late Sunday into Monday, I unfortunately got a practical lesson in the concept of thermal lag - the time that it takes a building that has absorbed heat to cool back down even after ambient temperatures are lower.

Saturday night, the temps dropped back down into the mid-20s, and we opened the shutters and kipped the windows overnight to let in the cooler air.

But on Sunday evening, absolutely nothing was cooling down. It was still around 30C (90F) outside at 10 p.m. and the sun was just beginning to set. It didn’t get down into the mid 20s until sometime around 2 a.m. So, despite opening the windows, it still felt like going to sleep in a sauna.

The heat wave broke Monday morning, with the temperatures back down to 26C, which is a normal high temperature for June in Berlin. The problem was, it was hotter inside our apartment than outside for at least half the day because our walls were still cooling off from all that heat.

Those thick concrete block support walls and insulation kept us toasty warm through the long chilly months, but worked against us in the heat wave.

Roasting in the attic

We had it easy, compared to many, though. People living in older buildings, particularly in the Dachgeschoss (roof level) apartments built in former unheated attics that have been converted to living space.

In many of these older buildings, inside temperatures reached over 30 degrees Celsius and couldn’t reasonably be lowered, even with the use of portable air conditioners and fans.

I know people who rented hotel rooms or stayed with friends to ride out the heat wave. Local hospitals and nursing homes were also severely affected.

The city published a map of designated cooling points, with the Berlin police deploying their massive water cannons to cool outdoor crowds rather than disperse them.

Our neighborhood WhatsApp group also shared information about local businesses with air conditioning and urged residents living on lower floors to offer assistance to those living in attics and older buildings.

According to the World Health Organization, the record temperatures were a contributing factor in more than 1,300 deaths across Europe. And, this is just the first of many such heat waves expected in the future.

Due the effects of climate change, the continent of Europe is warming at twice the global average, WHO chief Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus warned in a post on the social media platform, X.

“The phenomenon of the ‘once-in-a-generation’ heatwave is now occurring nearly annually,” he said.

Not as simple as ‘just get AC’

I read several articles in the international news media and on American social media that questioned Europe’s “aversion” to the use of mechanical air conditioning. (I also vented about that in another blog post.)

But it is a misconception to think that Europe in general and Germany, in particular, has some kind of cultural resistance to the use of A/C.

Europe doesn’t have air conditioning the way that the United States does for two basic reasons.

• First, until very recently, it wasn’t needed—most Germans my age in Berlin say summer highs reaching even 30C (86F) were almost unheard of until a few years ago.

• Second, air conditioning consumes a lot of electricity and electricity here is expensive.

Andrew Bossom, an English YouTuber who has lived in Germany for more than 30 years, explains it better in this video.

It makes much more sense for Germans to focus resources on efficient ways to keep themselves warm in the winter. And they haven’t been using electricity for that, either.

The government has been trying to encourage the transition to energy efficient electric heat pumps from older gas boilers and, particularly in the east, the use of coal stoves. As recently as 2021, there were still almost 6,000 homes in Berlin alone burning coal as their main heat source.

Individuals, businesses and governments in Europe simply cannot afford to also wholesale retrofit all businesses and homes with air conditioning.

Mobile air conditioners have been much more popular as the summers have gotten hotter. But, due to the expense of running them, and the difficulty in venting the hot air they generate - people who have them only use them sparingly.

Air conditioning worsens climate change

A/C for most of Europe is and will be a ‘something used to stay alive during a heat wave’ thing and not a ‘maintain a constant cool temperature indoors’ thing that many Americans are used to.

And this is important. As I wrote in my other piece, the use of air conditioning is a key driver of increased carbon dioxide emissions and global climate change.

‘Space cooling,’ mostly the use of air conditioners, but also electric fans, accounts for between 7.5 and 8 percent of global electricity use. Because most electricity is produced through the burning of fossil fuels, this means air conditioning is responsible for pumping around one billion tons of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere annually.

In addition, older and poorly maintained AC systems leak their chemical refrigerants into the air. These refrigerants contain industrial hydroflurocarbons (HFCs) which trap heat much more efficiently than carbon dioxide alone. It is estimated that HFC emissions contribute the equivalent of around 720 million tons of carbon dioxide to the atmosphere each year.

Just on an individual level, portable, freestanding air conditioning units increase local ambient temperatures because they vent heated air outside. So, you may be cooling your attic room off, but making it hotter for your neighbors lower down who couldn’t buy an air conditioner themselves.

Passive cooling + newer technologies are better

Fortunately, countries across the EU are taking a comprehensive approach to the problem, by encouraging or mandating the use of passive cooling technologies like green roofs, street-level greenspaces, and building designs that promote air circulation. At the same time, they are exploring the use of newer air conditioning technologies that are more energy efficient and less damaging to the environment.

Some examples:

• Berlin is encouraging the construction and preservation of urban greenspaces to reduce the heat island effect.

• Paris is pioneering the use of water from the Seine River in district cooling plants that send cold water in underground pipes to cool buildings, while complementary pipes circulate heating water away.

• As rewboss mentioned above, the use of ‘reversible’ heat pumps in newer German homes can both heat and cool the interior in a way that is less damaging to the environment than traditional air conditioning units.

Even in the United States, where the use of air conditioning is much more common, access to it still far from universal. Particularly in rural areas with less stable power grids, many Americans also have a hard time keeping cool during extreme heat waves.

And as more and more competing demands for electricity are placed on aging infrastructure, more people may find themselves unable to afford the A/C systems they once took for granted.

Thoughts? Questions? Tips on surviving the next recordbreaking heatwave? Share them with me and other readers in the comments section! As always, thanks for reading!

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Visitors and residents new to Berlin - especially those who have been to other German cities - often have a common question upon first experiencing it: Why doesn’t Berlin have the typical ‘Altstadt’ at its center?

If you’ve been to other German cities and towns, they are all, to some degree, centered around an “old town” plaza that is centered on two anchors: a large, old church and a large, old town hall.

And Berlin does have this physical center area in Alexanderplatz - where the Rotes Rathaus is, as well as the Nikolaiviertel, the oldest part of the original city of Berlin. On its borders reside the Berliner Dom, the elaborate neo-Renaissance cathedral church of the imperial kaisers, and also the controversially reconstructed royal Berliner Schloss (Berlin Palace).

But it doesn’t really feel much like the center of Berlin, just one of many popular places in a very large metropolis.

Some have speculated that the total destruction of most of the city during the Second World War, plus 40 years’ of division during the Cold War are the reason for the lack of cohesion. And while those catastrophes certainly contributed, the truth is that Berlin doesn’t lack a city center — it has many city centers.

I once heard someone say that Berlin is not really a single large city, but “five medium-size cities in a trenchcoat.”

And I don’t think there could be a more accurate description. In truth, the real roots of Berlin’s urban sprawl lie in an event that happened earlier, on the 27th of April, 1920.

The Greater Berlin Act of 1920

On that day, the Prussian state parliament passed the Greater Berlin Act, official title: the Law Regarding the Creation of the New Municipality of Berlin.

The law, when it took effect the following October, instantly doubled the city’s population from 1.9 million people to 3.8 million by incorporating seven surrounding towns; 59 rural communities; and 27 estate districts1 all in one fell swoop. The land area increased from the 65.72 square kilometers of Alt-Berlin to 878.1 square kilometers of the newly created Greater Berlin.

The new city became the third largest city in the world at the time, with a population just behind London and New York.2

Though the change was sudden, the effort to enact some form of governance over the whole Berlin connurbation had been going on in some form for decades. The cities and towns surrounding Berlin had been growing toward the center in the last decades of the 19th century as the area had rapidly industrialized.

In the crowded industrial districts, workers lived in overcrowded tenements in unsanitary conditions. The growing metro urgently needed more oversight for housing, transportation services and wastewater management.

According to historian Herbert Schwenk, by 1900, the 151 towns and municipalities in the Berlin area had 43 different gas, 17 water, and 15 electricity companies working side by side.

Conflicts were unavoidable and increasingly frequent.

While (Old) Berlin used Lake Tegel as its main source of drinking water, for example, the towns of Reinickendorf and Tegel channeled their wastewater there.

A more centralized authority was increasingly necessary.

Even so, the idea of becoming one big city was not universally popular.

According to the information about the plan published on the Berlin government website, the final vote was close:

“For a long time, it looked as if middle-class conservative groups in the wealthy suburbs - such as Charlottenburg, Zehlendorf and Spandau - would be able to prevent the formation of Greater Berlin. The vote in the Prussian Constituent Assembly was close: the law was passed by 164 votes to 148 with five abstentions.

The Social Democrats (SPD), the Independent Social Democrats (USPD) and parts of the left-liberal German Democratic Party (DDP) were in favour, while the more bourgeois parties Deutschnationale Volkspartei (DNVP), Deutsche Volkspartei (DVP) and the Catholic Centre Party opposed it.”

Out with the old

And so, overnight, posh villa districts like Grunewald and Lichterfelde, independent municipalities like Charlottenburg, Spandau, and Köpenick, the gritty industrial areas of Wedding, Kreuzberg, and Friendrichshain, and agricultural manor estates like Britz and Buch, all became one city—Berlin.

The Prussian Constituent Assembly, created in the aftermath of the 1918 abdication of Kaiser Wilhelm II, and which had been tasked with transitioning the government from the Kingdom of Prussian into a self-governing Free State of Prussia, had the power to unilaterally order the annexation of all the separate entities into one.

The Prussian government legally had to compensate the surrounding Brandenburg regions, which lost a huge chunk of their tax base, but none could oppose losing the territory. Similarly, the private landowners who had had total administrative and financial control of the large manor estates located within the new city’s boundaries retained ownership of the land, but lost all administrative control — including the authority to issue and collect taxes and the responsibility of providing police and fire protection and other public services.

The new city was divided into 20 boroughs (known as Verwaltungsbezirke):

• six from the original city of Berlin (Mitte, Tiergarten, Wedding, Prenzlauer Berg, Kreuzberg, and Friedrichshain);

• one each for the seven previously independent towns and cities (Charlottenburg, Köpenick, Lichtenberg, Neukölln, Schöneberg, Spandau, and Wilmersdorf);

• and seven new boroughs created for the remaining added areas, with each borough named after the largest village in the area at the time (Pankow, Reinickendorf, Steglitz, Tempelhof, Treptow, Weißensee and Zehlendorf).

Although the city limits have largely remained the same since 1920 - even surviving the division of the country - the interior administrative organization has changed.

During the division of Berlin and Germany following World War II, the boroughs were reorganized by their respective governments and some new districts were added.

Following reunification, the boroughs were reorganized again. Administrative reforms passed in 2001 reduced the number of borough from 23 to 12, merging and combining some to reduce the total number.

Today, the 12 Berlin bezirke are:

• Mitte, (which includes the original boroughs of Mitte, Tiergarten, and Wedding);

• Friedrichshain-Kreuzberg;

• Pankow (which now includes the former separate boroughs of Prenzlauer Berg and Weißensee)

• Charlottenburg - Wilmersdorf;

• Spandau;

• Steglitz-Zehlendorf;

• Tempelhof-Schöneberg;

• Neukölln;

• Treptow-Köpenick;

• Marzan-Hellersdorf;

• Lichtenberg (which also includes Hohenschönhausen); and

• Reinickendorf.

We are all Berliners

In addition to the boroughs, there are hundreds of different small localities all over the city that harken back to a village or farming estate that was incorporated into it. Some of these places are older the original Berlin. And some have been assigned then re-assigned to different city boroughs over time, separating them from their historical context and obscuring much of their history.

For example, we live in what is now part of Friedrichshain, which was already part of Berlin before 1920. But, the area we live in is the former village of Boxhagen, which - together with the neighboring village of Rummelsburg - had been annexed into the city of Lichtenberg before it became part of Greater Berlin.

Today, the Boxhagener area is part of the borough of Friedrichshain, but Rummelsburg remains part of Lichtenberg.

To me, the area still “feels” like it goes with Lichtenberg, much more than it does the rest of Friedrichshain. And, Friedrichshain feels completely different from Kreuzberg, which is across the Spree River.

Fun fact: During the time of the DDR, Kreuzberg was in West Berlin and Friedrichshain was East Berlin—the river was the border.

So, if you have ever been in Berlin and noticed that one area has completely different architecture and even a different-looking street grid from a neighboring one, this is why.

It may have nothing to do with east versus west. But historic divisions from much farther back.

Sources

Urban planning for governing the metropolis – The case of Greater Berlin 1900-1920. by Christopher Bernhardt. Inventer le Grand Paris: Histoire croisée des métropoles, 2016.

The Greater Berlin Act. Berlin.de - The Official Website of Berlin. January 17, 2024.

Power and Powerlessness - A Series of Major Plans. Unvollendete Metropole. Unfinished Metropolis. An exhibition on the 100th anniversary of Greater Berlin.

1920 - A Crisis Year. Unvollendete Metropole.

The historic villages hidden in Berlin. The Berliner. March 2, 2023.

My friend Joe at ZenKimchi wrote a post a few days ago lamenting the Korean tourism industry’s promotion of curated, Instagram-ready tourist hotspots while neglecting many unique and more authentic experiences that tourists are more likely to enjoy.

READ: The Fish Versus Ducks Problem in Korean Tourism. ZenKimchi. May 14, 2026.

That made me think of Berlin’s double Venices. Two different districts nicknamed after the Italian city.

Neu-Venedig (New Venice), probably the better known of the two, is a neighborhood in southeast Berlin that is crisscrossed with canals. Residents and visitors get around the neighborhood with canoes and rowboats.

The neighborhood was first developed in 1890 when the city of Köpenick, now part of Berlin, acquired the property of the former Rahnsdorf manor and Hessenwinkel estates. The city originally planned to drain the marshy meadows near the S…

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I am convinced that the biggest myth that needs busting about life in Berlin is not that it’s still ‘poor but sexy,’ or that non-millionaires can still get a new rental contract in Prenzlauer Berg.

It’s that taking a taxi when the bus is late will get you there on time.

I was reminded of this Thursday as I strolled past a long line of cars stuck in traffic on a small street near my apartment. Although I saw the occasional taxi or work van, behind the wheel of most vehicles sat a single, very frustrated driver.

I was almost sitting among them. Road and tram-line construction have created traffic bottlenecks all over Lichtenberg and Friedrichshain, leaving tram riders depending on replacement buses to complete their journeys, and drivers taking detours off main roads through neighborhoods.

I was coming back from a parent meeting …

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I woke up our first morning in Gdańsk the same way I fell asleep, lulled by the church bell at the nearby Basilica of St. Mary chiming the hour. Cool air wafted through the kipped windows of our hotel room in the heart of the city’s historic center, the Główne Miasto or Main City.1

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My husband just passed his Leben in Deutschland test, with a perfect score—33 out of 33 questions correct.

This is important because it was the last required task before he could apply for permanent residence (the Niederlassungserlaubnis). Leben in Deutschland (literally, “Life in Germany”) is the official Einbürgerungstest, the same test you take if you want to become a German citizen. But it’s required for permanent residence, too.1

Because David is here on an EU Blue Card, he can apply for PR after just three years. Non Blue-Card holders (like me) have to wait for five.2

He is our anchor here - in more ways than one. His job with an international tech company allowed us to move here in the first place. His security as a permanent resident will mean that we won’t have to leave if he changes jobs or loses this job and has to look for another one.

This is important as layoffs in the tech sector become more common…

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Berlin is in the midst of a lovely false spring after experiencing its coldest winter in 16 years. Despite my earlier attempts at positive winter spin, I have never been more ready to see the end of the season. It feels like Christmas was six months ago.

I’m not so foolish as to think that actual spring has arrived.

I know we can expect at least one more hard freeze, if not another round of snow, before the end of April when sun + higher temps are more reliable.

And if the city has taught me anything in the three years we’ve lived here, is that when you see the sun in March, the housework, school work (and blog updates) can wait.

So posting will continue to be light over the next several days is what I’m saying.

In the meantime, check out these links to things I’ve been reading, watching and listening to, recently.

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It is a mystery that has puzzled European historians for hundreds of years and is still hotly debated. Who constructed the thousands of narrow, empty, underground tunnel networks scattered all over Europe?

Known as ‘Erdstalls’ — the etymology is from the Middle High German erde for ‘earth’ and either stelle for ‘place’ or stollen (mineshaft) — they are most heavily concentrated in southern Germany and Austria. (There are more than 700 in Bavaria alone.) But they have also been documented in Hungary, Spain, France, Ireland and Scotland.

I first heard about them from this article in the newsletter, weird medieval guys.

…

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This is probably the most common misconception many people (particularly Americans) have about moving to Europe.

That everyone gets “free healthcare.”

It is true that all countries in Europe have what is known as “universal healthcare,” meaning that all people in a given country or region are able to get the medical care that they need, when and where they need it, without financial hardship.

And, it is true that the governments in all of these countries assumes some degree of responsibility for ensuring this — whether it is by a single-payer, government-funded system (like the UK or Sweden) or a system that combines the use of public and private health insurance (like Germany, France and Italy), these systems are all supported by taxes paid by the people benefiting.

Remember what I wrote here about our taxes almost doubling when we moved to Germany?

It’s not free.

And, in Germany, we still pay insurance premiums and have some very limited out-of-pocket…

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After a brief interlude where the temps climbed above freezing and the snow and ice melted away, the cold returned again last week and with it the ice-covered streets, sidewalks, lakes and streams.

This January was Berlin’s coldest in 16 years, according to the German weather service, with the average temperatre just -1.9C. (That’s 28.6 Fahrenheit, FYI. It just always sounds more hardcore in Centigrade.)

Although such winter weather used to be much more common here, it seems Berlin has grown unaccustomed to dealing with long periods of ice. Doctors’ offices and hospitals reported record numbers of injuries from people slipping on frozen sidewalks and streets.

State law requires inidividual property owners to keep the public sidewalks in front of their properties free, but there seems to be almost no enforcement against those who don’t.

This year did seem particularly bad to me - the sections of sidewalk that were actual…

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In Berlin’s Schöneberg district stands a secondary school named for Sophie Scholl, a member of the White Rose resistance movement executed in 1943 for resistance to National Socialism.

She and her brother were caught distributing leaflets on the campus of Munich’s Ludwig Maximilian University urging passive resistance to the Nazis. They were put on trial, convicted of high treason, aid to the enemy, and distributing subversive propaganda.

The Berlin school is one of many streets, schools and plazas all over Germany and Austria that are named in honor of the young woman revered by Germans, today, as one of “our best.”

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Powdery snowdrifts crunched under my feet as I trudged along a busy Goethestraße in Charlottenburg last night. Soft flakes blurred my vision and collected in the folds of my coat and messenger bag. Strangely, the new surge of winter weather lightened my mood.

Earlier that afternoon, I had been struggle-stomping my way to an appointment along those same ice covered streets, trying to avoid slipping and falling, cursing the lack of enforcement of the Räumen- und Streuenpflict (clearing and ‘gritting’ obligation).

Somehow the new-fallen snow added some traction and walking became less like unexpected ice skating and more like walking on a sandy beach - if a very cold and dark sandy beach.

Instead of studying the ground in front of me for every step, I could look up and appreciate the scene - snowcapped roofs, bright shop windows, people pulling their young children and/or th…

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So, despite all my bitching and moaning about New Year’s Eve in my last post, it was relatively calm over by us.

I think we have the weather to thank for that, rather than any human-led effort. There was quite a lot of rain between 1 and 3 a.m., which seemed to have put a damper on things.

While we did have to deal with people setting off firecrackers in our hof all night, that’s nothing compared to last year when it sounded like people we setting off bombs on the roof.

There was significantly less garbage all over the park to clean up the next morning, which was nice.

That’s not to say I was completely wrong about the outcome. There were still an unacceptable number of injuries and property damage. But, by Berlin…

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Every year around this time I begin to see the same kinds of posts on social media.

I’m coming to Berlin on New Year’s Eve!

Where should I go?

Is the S-Bahn safe to ride late at night?

Where is the best place to see fireworks?

This always brings to mind the advice I got when we first moved here - which are still the words I live by on Dec. 31:

Be where you plan to stay by 7 p.m. and don’t leave there until after sunrise the next day.

Yes, the S-Bahn is generally safe, even at night. And unlike most nights, the trains will be running frequently all through the night.

It’s everywhere around the S-Bahn that isn’t safe on Silvester.1

Unless you are the kind of person who enjoys throwing incendiary devices at others or having them thrown at you, then I advise watching some fireworks from a balcony or bridge early in the evening and then staying inside (shutters closed, if you have them), for the duration.

Think I am exaggerating?

Here is a short list of highlights …

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Today is Black Friday. Yes, even in Germany — though it mostly exists in that virtual no-man’s land of online retail, not in brick-and-mortar stores.

(It’s also called ‘Black Friday,’ instead of the German ‘Schwarzer Freitag,’ in in open acknowledgement of its status as an American import.)

As the purported first shopping day of the Christmas season, this time of year is particularly stressful for Americans in Germany looking to send gifts back to friends and family. Well, unless they are very good at planning ahead.

( And I am not.)

International shippers require packages to be mailed very early to make it to a destination outside Europe by December 25. DHL, which operates Deutsche Post’s package delivery service, requires parcels to be mailed by November 26, for standard delivery - by December 3, if you pay for premium service. Christmas cards can be mailed as late as December 6.

Every year, my good intentions of sending handmade ornaments found in o…

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It was the largest general strike ever in the former West Germany and I had never read anything about it.

I can’t find any mention of it in English-language sources, likely because American and British news outlets were focused on the Berlin Blockade and subsequent Berlin Airlift that were happening at the same time.

(Note: All excerpts and quotations below have been translated from German into English.)

Inflation, currency reform and low wages

On November 12, 1948 - 77 years ago this past Wednesday - around 9 million workers in the American and British sectors (this is out of a total workforce of 11 million) staged a 24-hour work stoppage to protest unaffordable food prices coupl…

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The 9th of November is known across Germany as a “Schicksalstag,” a “fateful day” in the nation’s history. The first German republic was proclaimed on this day in 1918. But it is also the day of the Hitler Putsch (also known as the Beer Hall Putsch) in 1923.

It is the date the Berlin Wall came down, but the event that led to the reunification of Germany is commemorated on a different day - October 3, the day the country was officially reunited.

It is also the day of the November pogroms - a wave of coordinated attacks against the Jewish population that occurred all over Nazi Germany between November 9 and 10, 1938.

When I was growing up in the United States, we learned about these events by another term, “Kristallnacht.”

Translated as “The Night of Broken Glass,” we were taught it was a wave of vandalism that targeted Jewish businesses, escalating the legal and soci…

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We were at the Museum für Naturkunde (Museum of Natural History) on Sunday for the opening of Berlin Science Week.

At a time when it seems like respect for scientific knowledge and research is increasingly undervalued around the world, it was gratifying to learn about the many different research efforts that are underway in Berlin and across Europe.

The Einstein Telescope, for example, is a cooperative effort by scientists from research institutes across Europe to build an underground gravitational wave observatory. Current plans call for its construction in the border area of northwest Germany, Belgium, and the Netherlands.

On Sunday, visitors could view a VR presentation about gravitational waves and learn more about the project.

I was interested in the research underway …

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I woke up at 4 a.m. this morning to my husband already in the kitchen brewing coffee and feeding our two dogs.

I got up, summoned my inner German, went down the hall, and rage-whispered into the darkness, “It’s Sunday! Why are you feeding them so early?”

“It’s almost five,” he shrugged. (Note: That’s when when normally get up during the week, though we’ve gotten the dogs used to sleeping a bit later on weekends.)

“It’s not!” I hissed back, flashing him the front of my phone screen.

The time change strikes again.

It always sneaks up on us and ruins my day, one way or another.

This time, my husband’s internal circadian rhythm woke him up at the normal weekday morning time, which was now an hour earlier than clock time.

In 2019, the European Parliament voted to end the time change across the EU starting in 2021, but member states have been unable to agree which tim…

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The title of this post should really be, “Five things I thought were European but aren’t.”

But I don’t think I am the only American to have cobbled together a fantasy pan-European culture in my mind—a Eutopia, if you will. One where everyone has ‘free’ healthcare and takes their lunch daily at the nearest sidewalk cafe.

We Americans can come up with a lot of preconceived notions. We imagine life “in Europe” to be as homogenous as life in the U.S. largely is, just different.1

But Europe is comprised of 50 different countries, 27 of which are in the European Union, each with their own unique culture, language(s) and history.

I got the idea for this post from watching a Paris apartment tour video by another creator. She mentioned something in the kitchen as being “pretty standard for Europe,” only to be quite put out by the number of commenters from different parts of Europe (okay, a lot of them were from Germany) informing her that it wasn’t like that …

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