How to Beat the Bejesus Out of This Bastard Prague Heat.
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| photo via Flickr by ataferner |
If you happen to be in
Prague right now, this heat wave might make you think about moving to
the North Pole to bask in glacial darkness for 24 hours per day.
Europeans don't have AC. Even when the last EuroHeatWave
killed 14,000 people in France, they did not install AC in their
quaint little maisonettes. Non. They just said c'est la vie and ate
a snail. That same heat wave killed more than 70,000 across Europe.
So when the sun beats down
and burns the tar up on the roof, and your shoes get so hot you wish
your tired feet were fire proof, follow these Wide Body Jetsetter
tips to keep your hot ass cool.
Heat Follows My Wide Ass Everywhere
Where I come from it gets
hotter than a two-dollar pistol. Growing up in the Central Valley in
California is like sitting in the waiting room just outside of Hell.
And whenever one of those smarmy TV reporters did their weekly How to
Beat the Heat report, I wanted to beat them like a red-headed
stepchild. Easy for you to beat the heat in your air-conditioned
studio, to which you drive to-and-from in your air-conditioned car to
your air-conditioned house. All of my working poor life I had to
drive 20-year-old cars with no AC to and from jobs with bosses so
cheap they only turned on the AC in their offices and let the labor
slowly suffocate in the heat. At home? If I happened to have working
AC and turned it on for more than five minutes per day, it cost me
$300 per month.
I have always hated the
heat. Even when I was a skinny bastard. Imagine how I hate it now,
with 100 pounds of blubber strapped onto my frame. When the sun bakes
down on my skin, I feel like a walrus slowly turning on a spit. Goo
goo g'joob. So these are the things I do to avoid heat stroke, heart
attack, and heat rashes in my nethers:
Heat-Beater #1: Get a Job in a Modern Building
Prague is surrounded by a
sea of gray concrete Soviet block housing and new tech offices in
equal proportion. Get your ass a job in one of these tech companies.
If you have an IT degree, you're gold. If you're a 'creative' soul
(doomed) like me, you'll have to work in the mail room or strapped to
a phone line listening to people call you a cocksucker because your
company didn't send them their collectible train on time. But hey,
these offices have AC, so it's better than sitting at home slowly
sliding down your sweaty, faux-leather couch.
Heat-Beater #2: Tramspotting
They now have
air-conditioned trams in Prague! Finally! Sure, there are only about
40 of them, but some wise soul at the Prague Transport grew tired of
having to scrape dead old people off the tram seats every summer. So
they bought a fleet of new
trams with AC in them. You will know them by their orange racing
stripes on their noses. However, you can lead a horse to water...
The Prague Transport
web forum is filled with complaints from Czechs saying 'bullshit tram
with bullshit people opening windows so the AC doesn't work. Total
bullshit.' Yes, the word 'blbost'
was translated on the fb forum as 'bullshit.' I've been lucky enough
to have ridden the AC trams without windows opened by shitbirds. That
AC REEEEAAAAALLLLLY works, man. It's like stepping out of a desert
into a meat locker. I pity the vůl
who tries to open the window on my watch.
Heat-Beater #3: Run Behind a Water Truck
The Prague roads get so
hot that they get all gummy like caramel, so you will often see huge
orange tanker trucks spewing water from all sides on the road around
them. When the day is hotter than Georgia asphalt, run behind that
water truck and cool your jets. Sure, that water plume may contain
chemicals known to Putin to melt the faces off of journalists, but
WTF are you gonna do when it's over 95 fucking degrees outside?
Heat-Beater #4: Like. Go to the Mall.
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| photo by Tiia Monto |
Heat-Beater #5: Wake Up at the Crack of Dawn and Open All Your Windows
As much as I hate
mornings, as much as I'd rather sleep til noon, my wide ass wakes up
stuck to my sweaty sheets at dawn. And I have my number 2 fan on me
all night. I stagger to my feet, bounce off my walls, throw hot
coffee on my face to wake up, then open up all the windows in my
flat. Can't leave them open all night, nosiree Bob. I live on the
ground floor in the ghetto and gypos would crawl into my flat and
steal my widescreen and my wife. Plus it stays hot all night until
about 5 am.
Like a Monkey With a Machine Gun
Czechs have AC but they
don't know how to use it. Most of the buildings in Prague were built
before AC was invented, so central AC is out of the question. This
means overpriced fans and overpriced portable AC units. Don't try to
buy a desk fan in a Czech appliance store, the greedy bastards will
charge you 50 bucks for a Chinese-made fan that costs 5 bucks to
produce. And the portable AC units cost more than a used car. Go to
building supply shops like Obi or Hornbach. I got a desk fan for only
300 crowns ($12). It's my number one fan.
Like anything new, it
takes time for the monkey to figure out how to get that spark onto
the stick pile. Such is the AC learning curve. Take a look around
Prague. Anytime you see one of those portable AC units in a small
shop, the stupid bastards have the front door wide open, with the AC
vent hose just snaking outside. Big Sir's Final Tip: AC basics. Dear
knedlikyheads, they've got instructions in Czech on that portable AC
unit that cost more than your old Škoda. Here's how AC works: it
sucks the hot air into the unit, passes it through a compressor,
condenser, and evaporator to chill that air out. Then it spews cold
air into the hot space. That big white hose on the beast is not the
tail. It vents ugly, stale, hot air. So that needs to be connected to
a vent in your window or wall. Anything else is just pissing into the
wind. Maybe these are the same idiots who open the windows on the AC
trams.
And with that, I'm turning
on my number one fan and closing my windows. It's 10 am and already
starting to get as hot as fuck. Stay cool, my ninjas.