06. July 2026
Europemaxxing, or: how to survive 40 degrees heat with no AC
With the heatwave continuing its firm grip on central Europe, I’m traveling through Denmark and Germany for a wedding and an impossible sports event.
An improvised waterslide around the Copenhagen harbour area
As I already indicated in my last post, the last week of June is a turbulent one for me. I handed in my laptop at my previous job last Wednesday before starting my new one July 1st. The one week I have between jobs is spent traveling: From Hamburg to Copenhagen, to celebrate with my freshly-married friends Petko and Cris; back to Hamburg, to pack and grab a good night’s sleep; on to Frankfurt, to cheer on my friend Chrizzy, who’s taking part in a long-awaited Ironman.
While all of this is happening, temperatures in Germany are reaching record-highs. In some places, we’re beating 40ºC, temperatures unheard of for June. And neither Germany nor Denmark have the infrastructure to deal with these temperatures: The most glaring issue is, of course, the lack of air conditioning. Any country that experiences this kind of weather regularly has AC just about everywhere you go, which makes the heat much more bearable. Additionally, water is understood to be a vital resource, and you can get it cheaply anywhere you go. Germany? €2 for half a liter of water at the kiosk. Pay up or perish.
What’s more, it is currently midsummer, and the harsh sunlight is ever-present for over fifteen hours a day, from around 6 in the morning all the way until around 9 in the evening. There is no respite from the sun, and the concrete never quite cools down.
Still, people try to live their lives the best they can. In Copenhagen specifically, I was incredibly impressed with the degree of work-life balance that enabled people to hang out in the parks or go for a swim in the harbor area in the middle of the day. I’ve tried to capture, as best as I can, the spirit of people making the most of the current situation.
Hamburg
On Wednesday (June 24th), I handed in my laptop. I received a very warm goodbye at the office at got to leave on the best of terms, which I am deeply grateful for. My train for Copenhagen would depart from Hamburg at around 11pm, so I had some time to kill after leaving the office. I ended up hanging around two different parks with very different vibes. The first image is from Hammer park, where people were grilling and racing the sun to empty their beer before it reached the temperatures of their surroundings.
A grill party at Hammer park.
Another park with a very different vibe is Planten un Blomen – I went there to catch what will likely be the only Water & Lights concerts of the season for me. These concerts happen daily at 10pm throughout summer with a weekly rotating program. The music wasn’t exactly for me this time, but the show is always worth catching.
The daily Water & Lights concerts at Planten un Blomen. Highly recommend if you visit!
Afterward, I went to the Dammtor train station, which is close by. My train was only delayed by an hour (shoutout to the Deutsche Bahn!), and I managed to catch a few hours of sleep before getting to Copenhagen at 6:30 the next day.
Copenhagen
Copenhagen turned out to be an incredible city. I had been there very briefly over ten years ago, but didn’t really get to appreciate the city. This time, my visit was equally brief – I spent just over 24 hours there – but I did make the most of it this time around.
I love the bicycle infrastructure in Copenhagen.
It wasn’t as hot as it had been in Hamburg. At a comparatively mild 26°C, you could still walk around easily, and life mostly seemed to be proceeding as usual, although people noticeably moved to wherever there was water.
As you can see, the harbour area was pretty crowded. – 1/4
We walked around the city pretty much the entire day, took a dive in the water (see image #2 in the above carousel), had oysters for lunch, visited city hall, had a great hot dog – too much to mention, really, and not all of it worth showing off in pictures.
Congrats, you two ❤️ – 1/3
After a long day, we ended up catching the Germany – Ecuador game (which I’d prefer not to get into), and I got back to my hostel around half past midnight. In the morning we headed out to catch a Flixbus back to Hamburg.
I don't really stay in hostels as much anymore when traveling, and sometimes I miss it. This one was pretty nice.
Frankfurt
The morning afterward I caught an early train to Frankfurt, this time without any delays. As a matter of fact, at some point there was an announcement that our train would have to stop and wait because we were too early and interfering with other trains’ schedules. Needless to say, the fact that a train being early would be so unexpected that it would mess up the Deutsche Bahn’s coordination was cause for widespread amusement amongst the passengers.
It’s a pretty universally agreed-upon fact that doing an Ironman is an impressive athletic feat. It involves swimming 3.8km, bicycling 180km and then running a marathon.
What people don’t talk about nearly enough is how exhausting it is to support an athlete. Because of the vast distances the athletes cover during the event, the logistics get pretty complicated. The start of the race would be at a lake some 20km outside of Frankfurt, and shuttles ran from 4:00 to 6:00 to get around 5.000 spectators and athletes there.
I got up at 4:15 to catch a shuttle at 4:45. Thankfully, I only had a few hundred meters to cover to get to the shuttle, but there was a pretty fascinating mix of still awake and already awake people out on the streets.
The Frankfurt skyline, as well as some of the still and already awake people – 1/4
The shuttles themselves were packed. I was later told that the ones at 4:00 had been basically empty, but I wasn’t going to get up at 3:30. My hostel room’s temperature hadn’t dropped below 30 degrees the entire night, with no AC and zero air circulation. It’s not like my sleep had been great.
Impressions from the shuttle. – 1/2
We arrived at the lake around 6:00. There were around a dozen international pro athletes there, who would start at 6:20 so they could do their own thing uninterrupted; everybody else would start between 6:30 and 7:00 in a “rolling start”. What that means is that roughly two out of the roughly 4.000 athletes would start every second so that everybody could be in the water within half an hour.
The athletes taking off; and the tired spectators taking their deserved naps – 1/2
We stuck around at the lake long enough to see Chrizzy get on her bike and headed back to Frankfurt in a completely packed shuttle. In Frankfurt, temperatures had easily crossed 35 degrees, and we had to get from the shuttle over the racetrack to catch Chrizzy and then head to the train station. After a lot of confusion, we managed to cross and find her just in time.
Two minutes later and I wouldn't have managed to snap this picture!
And that was Frankfurt for me! I had to catch the train to head back to Dresden afterward. Chrizzy, if you read this, congrats for the completed Ironman! Great job :)
Closing Notes
This post was delayed a fair bit. The last events of this post are already a week in the past, which is not the cadence I usually aim for. In my defense, things were really busy. I just got back from my new job’s onboarding week in Berlin. It was very fun, and I’m very excited, but of course it’s also very draining.
I’d like to thank my former colleagues (some of whom I know are reading this) for making my last day at work special. It was super nice, and I appreciate all of you. I’ll try to stay in touch.
I’ll probably continue breaking with my usual cadence; I simply don’t have the mental bandwidth right now to keep up the pace of editing and writing. Besides my new job, the next months are looking mighty busy, with us breaking from our usual “two to four weeks per place” rhythm to perform some truly impressive logistical feats. I’ll write about that when I get to it.
For now, thanks for sticking around, and until next time!