Recently Europe has been enjoying a little heat wave with offices in Munich reaching temperatures usually only found in saunas and London topping 30°C, a three year record high! But rather than sit back and enjoy the sunshine, everyone complained about the heat and the British even initiated an emergency heat rescue program!
Normally I would just smile about this, but winter has hit South Africa hard and it is f*** freezing out here right now! So hearing people complain about not being able to sleep at night because it’s too hot, really isn’t what I need when I have to wear six layers of jumpers at night to keep warm!
Even though my flat is considered relatively warm by South African standards, I find it freezing cold and have gotten into a habit of wearing at least two pairs of trousers when sitting under a big duvet on the sofa – with a hot water bottle on my lap and a cup of tea in my hands! Sadly, I am not kidding …! A few weeks ago I realised that there was only place where I was actually warm: I would get up in the morning and the flat was freezing (which makes getting into the shower very unpleasant!), then I would be cold at work because the air con is still keeping us deep-frozen, if I would go out at night, restaurants would be cold, cinemas chilly and even when I visited friend’s houses, I would cuddle under a mountain of blankets! So the only place where I was actually warm was on the way to work in my car! I thought that this was completely ridiculous and consequently made the best investment of my life: I bought an electric heater, which now stands under my desk at work and keeps me nice and warm from 7am til 4pm! That’s what I call R179 well spent – even though I feel incredibly guilty about heating an air-conditioned office…
The other day I went for dinner at a friend’s place, who was celebrating her birthday with a few close friends, pizza and wine! Dinner was fantastic, wine plenty, presents well-appreciated and conversation entertaining – it would have been a lovely evening if not for the fact that all the way through dinner none of us dared to take off our jackets! We sat around the table, ate and laughed with our scarves, hats and gloves on! Thinking that it would be cold, I had even brought my hot water bottle and kept it on my lap all evening even though I had the best seat right next to the electric heater. I have certainly never experienced anything like it - a dinner party Eskimo style! And I am definitely not keen to have it repeated, but in a country like South Africa, where walls are thin, isolation poor and double-glazing unheard off, I have the feeling that it might happen over and over again.
So apart from adding an interesting touch to my social life, the weather has also made it quite a bit more dangerous for me to get to work. Recently, nights have been so cold that I have had ice on my windscreen in the mornings! Scratching it off is not an option – far too cold to be outside – and waiting for the heating to do the job takes ages unless the car is driving... so I have often set off to work without being able to see much or – let’s be honest – anything at all! The other day my windscreen was completely white and I had to lean out of my window to see the road ahead. While this doesn’t normally last very long and my windscreen is clear after a few hundred metres, it painfully reminds me of just how cold it is these days!
Despite all this, I am tempted to say that the worst thing about the cold out here is not the cold itself, but the reaction of South Africans when I tell them that I’m cold. South African’s must have the impression that Europe is still very much stuck in the ice age and covered with frost and snow for most of the year. So for them it is completely irrational for a European to be cold in South Africa – after all, we should be used to these kinds of temperatures! What they do not realise and refuse to believe is that the European cold is a lot more bearable, because buildings are warm! Central heating, proper isolation, no air-conditioning, double glazing … all these little things that you really only start to appreciate when you’re stuck in 0°C with the wind blowing through the windows!
So after suffering for the past month while most of you got to enjoy sunshine in Europe, I think it is fair that I get to enjoy the hottest temperatures, the bluest sky and the best weather again! And this is exactly why Ewa and I are flying to Tanzania on Saturday! Exploring the night-life in Dar es Salaam, swimming with dolphins in Zanzibar, going on a spice tour in Stonetown… just a few highlights of a trip that will definitely help me to forget icy Pretoria very quickly!
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