{"id":234625,"date":"2025-07-03T11:54:19","date_gmt":"2025-07-03T11:54:19","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/234625\/"},"modified":"2025-07-03T11:54:19","modified_gmt":"2025-07-03T11:54:19","slug":"i-regret-moving-to-munich-due-to-the-stifling-heat-summers-arent-fun-anymore","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/234625\/","title":{"rendered":"I regret moving to Munich due to the stifling heat \u2013 summers aren\u2019t fun anymore"},"content":{"rendered":"

\n\t\t\t\t\tAs scorching temperatures grip Europe with highs in the 40s, one British expat says he is struggling to cope in Germany\u2019s heatwave\t\t\t\t\t <\/p>\n

When I first moved from London to Munich in 2022 to join my German partner, it was just in time for summer. I hadn\u2019t really considered it, but I was swapping the UK\u2019s stop-start sunshine for something radically different, complete with months-long al fresco dining, blue skies that actually stayed blue, and more outdoor bathing areas than you could shake a pretzel at. And just as summer crept into autumn, it was time for Oktoberfest. I was in heaven.<\/p>\n

If that first summer felt like an endless Euro-trip, this summer just feels\u2026 endless. For me, at least, it\u2019s getting way too hot \u2013 too hot to work, sleep, or go out on a run without some sort of medical support team in tow. It feels absurd for a Brit to say this, but I\u2019m already looking forward to winter \u2013 and questioning whether I can hack temperatures here on the continent for much longer.<\/p>\n

Like much of central Europe, Munich is getting hotter<\/a> at a faster rate than the global average. The city enjoyed 20 \u201chot days\u201d \u2013\u00a0days over 30\u00b0C \u2013\u00a0during my first summer, rising to 25 the following year. We\u2019re already on 11 for this year, having added four since Sunday \u2013\u00a0and July\u2019s just getting started. The heat\u2019s beginning to feel relentless.<\/p>\n

\"\"Although Alex enjoys the good consistent weather, he says this summer it feels too hot to work, sleep, or go out on a run (Photo: Supplied)<\/p>\n

And there are signs it\u2019s not just me feeling this way. This past week, everyone\u2019s been upgrading their fans. You see the old ones out on the street with signs saying \u201czu verschenken\u201d \u2013 to give away \u2013 kind of the German equivalent of taking a bag down the charity shop. They get scooped up within minutes, probably by people who are working on multi-fan set-ups. I caved and bought a fan last summer; now, after admiring friends\u2019 climate-control tech, I\u2019m in the market for a mist-spraying one.<\/p>\n

Then there\u2019s my long-suffering German housemate, who I bumped into yesterday, in a daze, waiting for the kitchen tap to run cold. I mumbled something about my new summer coping strategy: sit in it, sit in the heat, be at one with the heat, learn to love the heat. He just stared and retreated into the separate, slightly larger sauna that is his room.<\/p>\n

I was born and raised in Kent, so perhaps it is my Britishness that\u2019s making this heat particularly hard to tolerate. Or being from northern Europe: my perpetually red Belgian friend hasn\u2019t been seen or heard from in days. Mid-way through my exposure therapy out on the balcony, my thoughts turn to the gentler, altogether more reasonable summers I used to enjoy in London. I fire up BBC weather. Oh.<\/p>\n

My London friends seem to be enjoying the heatwave<\/a>, but most of my German friends agree it feels like we\u2019re crossing a threshold of bearability here in Munich. And the heat truly is different here. There\u2019s something particularly inescapable and oppressive about the ambient heat \u2013 it\u2019s not just baking the top of your head, but emanating from the paving stones, the roads, the buildings. Even the wind is hot, which means sweating doesn\u2019t cool you down.<\/p>\n

\"\"Alex has noticed fans littering the street as people upgrade theirs for stronger, more efficient models (Photos: Supplied)<\/p>\n

Because of this heatwave, everyone\u2019s got their window shutters down \u2013 proper blackout, garage-door-type things. We\u2019re all working in dark rooms, disconnected from the outside world, too knackered to head out for a Feierabendbier (post-work drink) \u2013 too sun-shy to venture out at all.<\/p>\n

And that\u2019s where things, for me, are starting to feel wrong. Say it quietly: is constant sunshine actually enjoyable? Is summer, maybe, possibly, becoming less fun?<\/p>\n

Just recently, for instance, Munich celebrated Pride with its annual parade through the city. We all noticed the crowds were smaller than last year \u2013\u00a0likely because it\u2019s so, so hot. I looked up the official figures: 2024\u2019s attendance was\u00a0325,000, while this year drew\u00a0250,000. At 28 degrees it\u2019s just too hot for a street party \u2013 or at least 75,000 people felt that way, enough to fill the Allianz Arena.<\/p>\n

Don\u2019t get me wrong \u2013 I really love Munich, and so do the friends and family who\u2019ve visited from back home. Unlike London, this city has a river, the Isar, that you can actually swim in. It\u2019s crystal-clear, fast-running, and ice-cold, flowing straight from the nearby Alps. When it reaches Munich\u2019s biggest park, the English Garden, the city\u2019s bygone planners had the genius to split it into a network of smaller streams, which locals use as lazy rivers \u2013 and to cool crates of beer. It\u2019s a god-send in the summer.<\/p>\n

\"\"Alex often finds the heat suffocating and has to work outside on his balcony to cope as his flat is so hot (Photos: Supplied)<\/p>\n

But you could also argue that this city\u2019s not built for these increasingly fierce heatwaves. Munich is car-loving to its core, so parking is generally favoured over tree cover, and the place is absolutely carpeted in tarmac, locking in heat for what feels like days after temperatures recede.<\/p>\n

Air conditioning<\/a> is sparse and balconies are tilted towards the sun \u2013\u00a0unlike those in southern Europe, where architecture tends to shield people from the heat. It may be time for cities like Munich to compare notes with Seville, Athens, and Rome. Just now, my housemate pushed through the door to announce that his university classes had been cancelled. It\u2019s 36 degrees in the buildings, apparently. <\/p>\n

Tomorrow, we\u2019re due a bit of respite: a huge thunderstorm is on the way \u2013 another feature of these drawn-out heatwaves that according to many Germans, are becoming more frequent and more intense every year.<\/p>\n

The storms cause their own problems. My partner works as cabin crew for Lufthansa, and for the past couple of years, she\u2019s faced a lot more cancellations, delays, extreme turbulence, and sick passengers due to these summer storms. Weather-related flight delays in the summer \u2013 all due to thunderstorms \u2013 were up 41 per cent across Europe last year, with Germany the most affected.<\/p>\n

Germans have this phrase in winter that \u201cthere\u2019s no such thing as bad weather, only bad clothing\u201d. Now they\u2019re joking: \u201cEs gibt keine Hitze, nur falsche Kleidung\u201d \u2013 \u201cthere\u2019s no such thing as heat, just the wrong clothes\u201d. They might be thinking of the 16 \u201cnudist tolerance zones\u201d in Munich, which I have to admit are growing more appealing by the hour. Or they might just be putting a brave face on a summer that is, unbelievably, keeping us all inside.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"As scorching temperatures grip Europe with highs in the 40s, one British expat says he is struggling to…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":234626,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5310],"tags":[2000,299,91835,20291,126,1824,2461,14299,741],"class_list":{"0":"post-234625","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-germany","8":"tag-eu","9":"tag-europe","10":"tag-europe-heatwave","11":"tag-expats","12":"tag-features","13":"tag-germany","14":"tag-heatwave","15":"tag-summer","16":"tag-weather"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@uk\/114789172435567387","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/234625","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=234625"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/234625\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/234626"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=234625"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=234625"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=234625"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}