{"id":121180,"date":"2026-07-02T20:37:00","date_gmt":"2026-07-02T20:37:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/dk\/121180\/"},"modified":"2026-07-02T20:37:00","modified_gmt":"2026-07-02T20:37:00","slug":"berlins-lack-of-air-conditioning-is-getting-as-old-as-its-buildings","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/dk\/121180\/","title":{"rendered":"Berlin\u2019s lack of air conditioning is getting as old as its buildings"},"content":{"rendered":"

Open this photo in gallery:<\/a><\/p>\n

The heat relief service IB Berlin-Brandenburg provides a cold room with food and cold drinks to people experiencing homelessness during the heat wave in Berlin last week.Axel Schmidt\/Reuters<\/p>\n

Kelly Dignan is a Canadian writer living in Germany.<\/p>\n

Despite this being my eighth summer in Berlin, I\u2019d never needed to buy a fan until record-breaking temperatures broiled much of Europe<\/a> last week. <\/p>\n

I left buying one too late, though, and had to spend all of last Thursday morning biking from one sold-out store to the next until I finally found an enterprising man with a stack of fans in front of a shop that normally sells party supplies and fake flowers. <\/p>\n

Now I had a fan, but as the temperature rose to 40, it only served to blow the hot air around my place. <\/p>\n

\u201cDon\u2019t people there have AC?\u201d a friend back in Toronto asked me, incredulous.<\/p>\n

The answer is, not really: Only 6 per cent of households in Germany currently have air conditioning. A recent article in The Atlantic<\/a> suggested that there is something to the European mentality that allows people to weather discomfort stoically, while looking upon North America as a land of excess and convenience at the expense of all else. <\/p>\n

Opinion: Air conditioning may kill you: The drawbacks of overadapting to a burning world<\/a><\/p>\n

I suspect, though, that it\u2019s more likely that the lack of air conditioning, at least in Germany, is the result of an unwavering allegiance to efficiency and rules. <\/p>\n

This January, Berlin had a cold snap that was the closest thing resembling a Canadian winter since I\u2019ve been here, coating everything in ice, like an enormous skating rink. But the city doesn\u2019t allow the use of salt, as it damages trees and groundwater, so everyone was slipping and sliding, filling up emergency rooms with fractures. The Berlin Senate decided to temporarily allow street salting, only to be challenged by environmental groups who argued this set a \u201cdangerous precedent\u201d and had the decision overturned days later. <\/p>\n

Is the AC situation like the salt? Are Germans forgoing immediate relief for a long-term commitment to sustainability? Or is this just another example, so common here, of change being stalled in an endless knot of bureaucracy, rules cancelling out other rules? <\/p>\n

Berlin, just like many cities across Europe, wasn\u2019t built for extremes. The typical \u201cAltbau\u201d apartments \u2013 pre-Second World War buildings \u2013 don\u2019t easily accommodate modern heating and cooling systems. They are already poorly insulated, with outdated wiring and plumbing. L\u00fcften, which translates to \u201cairing out,\u201d is a national daily ritual (often even written into rental contracts), enforced to avoid the buildup of toxic mould. <\/p>\n

What is a \u2018heat dome\u2019 and how are they created?<\/a><\/p>\n

For homeowners, modifications are a difficult process, especially for historical buildings where work must be approved by preservation authorities or use specific materials. <\/p>\n

Whether it\u2019s these practical considerations, or wanting to not be as wasteful as North Americans, the hellishness of the past week is a reason to reconsider both. <\/p>\n

On Saturday, I was woken up at 2 a.m. by a panting dog; I panicked, not knowing how I could possibly cool her down. I set my alarm for three hours later so I could walk her at 5 a.m. when it was \u201conly\u201d 28 degrees. I changed clothes every few hours and took multiple cold showers. Businesses were shut across the city, trains were cancelled, and people were drowning as they cooled down in rivers and lakes. Across Europe, 1,300 deaths were attributed to the heat wave<\/a>. Surely, this was a case where we could do with a little North American coddling?<\/p>\n

As a group of my friends sat in a shaded park, our conversation sounded like a meet-up of amateur meteorologists. Someone said Europe is heating up faster than anywhere else in the world. (It is, in fact, progressing at a rate twice the global average.) Another told us about the influence of El Ni\u00f1o, winds blowing up from northern Africa. <\/p>\n

Open this photo in gallery:<\/a><\/p>\n

People seek shade under trees along the Spree river during the heat wave in Berlin on Sunday.Maryam Majd\/Reuters<\/p>\n

We also told stories about standing in snaking lines for ice cream, shared cooling tips we read online and laughed about our personal struggles to do lengths in overcrowded pools. Unspoken was a darker feeling that the world as we know it has changed, is changing \u2013 and the cities we live in are not built for the new reality we\u2019re living in. <\/p>\n

When the heat finally started to break on Sunday night, I was outside, watching Canada play in the World Cup on an oversized TV outside a convenience store. It was 9 p.m. and still 31 degrees. We saw the players run into the stadium in Los Angeles, a city where only recently we were checking on friends affected by wildfires, just like friends in Toronto had been checking on me. <\/p>\n

\u201cLook, it\u2019s only 20 degrees in L.A.,\u201d someone said, sighing.<\/p>\n

And I thought about how that\u2019s the same temperature my friends in Toronto were experiencing \u2013 chilling inside with their AC blasting.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Open this photo in gallery: The heat relief service IB Berlin-Brandenburg provides a cold room with food and…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":121181,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":"","_share_on_mastodon":"0"},"categories":[99],"tags":[2592,2582,2593,112,2574,2572,2594,227,2571,2587,2588,2584,2573,2570,1414,440,2072,2586,2580,190,2605,2575,2576,1585,2583,2501,2578,2595,436,2600,2601,2603,2598,2602,2596,2599,2577,2590,2591,1158,2589,2597,2581,239,1413,2585,2579,1161,2604],"class_list":["post-121180","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-berlin","tag-alberta","tag-arts-news","tag-bc","tag-berlin","tag-breaking-news","tag-breaking-news-video","tag-british-columbia","tag-canada","tag-canada-news","tag-canada-sports","tag-canada-sports-news","tag-canada-trafficcanada-weather","tag-canadian-breaking-news","tag-canadian-news","tag-economy","tag-education","tag-environment","tag-federal-government","tag-foreign-news","tag-germany","tag-globe-and-mail","tag-globe-and-mail-breaking-news","tag-globe-and-mail-canada-news","tag-government","tag-life-news","tag-lifestyle","tag-local-news","tag-manitoba","tag-national-news","tag-new-brunswick","tag-newfoundland-and-labrador","tag-northwest-territories","tag-nova-scotia","tag-nunavut","tag-ontario","tag-pei","tag-photos","tag-political-news","tag-political-opinion","tag-politics","tag-politics-news","tag-quebec","tag-sports-news","tag-technology","tag-travel","tag-trudeau","tag-us-news","tag-world-news","tag-yukon"],"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"","error":"Validation failed: Text character limit of 500 exceeded"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/dk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/121180","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/dk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/dk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/dk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/dk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=121180"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/dk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/121180\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/dk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/121181"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/dk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=121180"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/dk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=121180"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/dk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=121180"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}